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Using Internet Search Engines |
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Search 'engines' are search sites on the Internet World Wide Web that index vast amounts of information and then serve it up to you in a short, concise form, useable in your research. This information is usually in the form of a list of web sites (with links to them) that contain information relevant to the search query you made. Search engines work by sending programs, known as 'spiders', across the Internet to search day and night and 'read' pages which they then index according to content. They look for keywords, relationships between words, phrases, etc. to try to decipher the gist and meaning of a page and then index this information so they can find it quickly when a search query is made. Due to the constantly changing data and ever rising number of pages on the Web, no search engine will have indexed it all. And, they each have different criteria by which they rate pages so if you are doing serious research, it's good to carry out your searches at more than one site as you will get different results. The first things you will want to find are some good search sites themselves. There are hundreds and they are all different but here are a few you might start with:
To point your browser to one of the search sites above, type the URL into the field at the top of your browser window (exactly as written) that says 'Location' or 'Go To' or 'Address' and hit 'Enter' or click the 'GO' button next to the field. This will take you to the search site's opening search page. (Once you have found a site, you might want to save it as a bookmark or favorite.) Then, in the search field, type the words that define your search and click the 'Search' button. Note: Some browsers are pre-set to open to a search page of some sort on starting up. In these cases, you must enter any URLs your want to visit into the browser Location Field, not the search field on your screen. The Location Field is usually the open field that is uppermost on your screen. As an example, if you wanted to know something about Attila (the Hun) and searched for 'Attila' at any of the search sites, you would be rewarded with a listing of all the pages they had indexed that referred to Attila. This would include Attila the movie, Attila the band, Attila the t-shirt and probably Attila the Hun as well. A lot of information. The information you are interested in may be all the way back on the 5th or 6th page of links. In order to filter your searches so you don't have to sift through tons of spurious information, you can use some advanced search techniques. Unfortunately, all the search engines use slightly different methods of filtering and fine tuning searches but there are a few things in common. In the standard search window, you can try some 'Boolean' search terms. The main terms you should know are: AND (+), OR, and ANDNOT (-) (The parentheses indicate that you may substitute the plus or minus sign, respectively, for AND and ANDNOT). The default in most cases is AND meaning that if you type Attila Hun, the search engine will assume you want to find pages that contain both words, as if you had queried Attila AND Hun. If you ask for Attila ANDNOT movie, you will get the listings that contain the word Attila but eliminate all those that contain the word movie. If you query Attila OR Hun, you will get all listings that contain either word (a very broad search). You can use Boolean search terms in a string of more than one. Just remember that you must start the string with a word you do want in the search (not one you don't want) and the word immediately after any Boolean term is the one which it will affect. Also, try surrounding your phrase with quotes as in "Attila the Hun". This would return only sites containing all three words, in that order. And on some sites, capitalized keywords will only return pages on which those words are capitalized. Lower case keywords will return both lower case and capitalized listings. As a further resource, click the link to Advanced Search and try some of their advanced features like specifying date windows, choosing languages, page title (only) searches, domain name searches, defined area of interest searches and more. David Goldberg |