Searching the
Internet
This page will discuss
various strategies and tools for searching the Internet. This is a
crowded field, with exotic names such as AltaVista, Lycos,
Dogpile, infoSeek, and Excite, to name a few. Hopefully this
lesson will give you a flavor of the myriad of tools (usually
called "search engines") and strategies available for searching
the Internet. We will start with basics of searching.
Searching the World Wide Web,
Usenet, and More: Some General Tips for
Searching
First, search engines typically
use Boolean logical operators to do their searching. Basically,
this means that you can use specific words to set up a fairly
sophisticated search that can be precisely defined. Search engines
recognize the operators "and," "not," "or," and parentheses. I'll
explain each of these briefly below:
And - this allows
you to search for items or directories that include two or more
terms of interest. Both terms will have to be in the document
or directory title to be included in your search results. An
example of an "and" search is the following:
Words to search for: utah and
weather
(Note: Most search engines will
assume an "and" if you do not place an operator between the two
words - "utah weather" will return the same search
results).
Not - this operator
allows you to exclude a term from the items you are searching
for. You might wish to locate documents on foreign language
programs except for ones involving Spanish. This search would
look like the following:
Words to search for: language
programs not spanish
Or - the "or" operator
should only be used rarely because it will return items that
include _either_ of the terms you enter. For instance, the
following search would give you a huge number of
results:
Words to search for: ibm or
mac
Parentheses -
Parentheses allow you to do rather complex searches by breaking
your search into separate elements. For instance, say you want
to find items on travel in either Spain or Portugal. Your
search would look like this:
Words to search for: travel and
(spain or portugal)
There are several combinations
of this type that can be made. My advice is to avoid making
your search too complex. Start with a fairly complex search,
and then break it down until you get the results you
need.
Second, search engines allow for
word truncation. This means that you can enter a word root
as a search term and then add an asterisk at the end (sometimes
the asterisk is not required). The search tool will search for any
word that begins with that root. For example, the search term
"librar*" would return items with the following words:
library
libraries
librarian
librarians
Truncation can be quite useful,
particularly with the issue of plurals and singulars. Say you were
interested in items on "librarians" or "librarian." You could
enter "librarian*" your search term and get items with either term
in them.
Third, typically you can control
how many results a search engine will return. A standard search
will be default to no more than 50 or 100 items. You can usually
modify this parameter via a pop-up menu or dialog box at the
site.
In the past few years, many very
sophisticated web-based search tools have been developed which can
search web pages, gophers, Usenet news postings, phonebooks and
more. A partial list of some popular search engines and indices
can be found below. Try several and then bookmark your favorites
for future visits. Typically these sites require a Web browsing
tool such as Netscape or Internet Explorer, although some may use
stand-alone applications, some of which are Java-based.
Cool Shortcuts
A little-known shortcut for
searching is available in both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft
Internet Explorer. Typing the question mark, followed by a space,
followed by a search term, in the "Location" line of your
web-browser initiates an automated search query. So, for example,
if you typed:
? library
you would be automatically
presented with a results page of web sites which satisfied this
query.
The newest versions of Navigator
(4.06 and greater) also have a useful "What's Related" pop-up menu
located to the right of the "Location" box. Clicking on it
initiates a lateral search (a search to identify other sites of a
similar type).
Direct Hit
DirectHit (http://www.directhit.com/)
is a "Popularity Engine" which ranks the top ten sites based upon
previous user activity related to a particular search subject. By
tracking the sites that users actually select from the search
results list, Direct Hit theoretically offers the most popular and
relevant sites for a given request. Direct Hit is presently
available in conjunction with the HotBot search engine
(http://www.hotbot.com).
Users can access it from the Direct Hit site or by running a
search at HotBot and selecting the "Get the Top 10 Most Visited
Sites for this query" link.
Multiple-Search-Engines
A new category of search engine is
emerging--the multiple-search-engine. These sites specialize in
conducting simultaneous searches from one query. This is different
than a site like search.com which is essentially an index of links
to other individual search sites. Here are a few of the most
promising multiple-search-engines for you to try.
Dogpile searches most of the
popular search engines including AltaVista (http://altavista.digital.com/)
and Reference.com (http://www.reference.com/).
It also searches FTP archives, Usenet newsgroups, and other
sources about which you might not have thought.
http://www.dogpile.com/
Happy searching!
