Effective Internet Searching

Why use the Internet

• Search for a question• Research a topic• Current research• Variety of sources, a click away

• What other non-online resources?– Encyclopedia, book, dictionary,

Atlas, World Almanac

Search Engines

• Collects copies of web pages from various host servers

• Assembled into a data base• Displayed according to relevancy and rank• Search engines use a program to search and

retrieve web sites; spiders/crawl the web thru links• Algorithm to determine rank; company ‘trade secret’• Google, Ask Jeeves, AOL Search, AltaVista, MSN Search

Internet Guides

• Index or directory of websites

• Classified by subject categories

• Organized by humans and not computer programs/algorithms

• Yahoo, Librarian’s Internet Index. EBSCO host, libraries

Four Search Strategies

• Keyword Searching

• Boolean

• Question

• Advanced

Keyword Searching

• Enter terms to search

• Use quotation marks to search as a phrase and keep the words linked together

• Common words are ignored (that, to, which, a, the, …)

• + and – can be used to include or exclude a word

Boolean Searching - AND

• Enter words connect with AND - it will include sites where both words are found

• Uses: joining different topics (ie. “global warming” AND California

president Washington

Boolean Searching - OR

• Enter words connect with OR - requires at least one of the terms is found

• Uses: join similar or synonymous topics (ie. “global warming” OR “greenhouse effect”)

dogs cats

Boolean Searching - NOT

• Enter words connect with NOT – searches for the first term and excludes sites that have the second term

• Uses: join similar or synonymous topics (ie. Washington NOT school)

Washington school

Boolean – (Nesting) and Near

• In a string of searching, terms placed in parentheses are searched first

• Parentheses must be used to group items if there is another Boolean operator being used

• NEAR may be used to require words to be found within 16 words of each other in the pages returned

Question Searching

• A question may be entered in the search field of a search engine.

• Ask Jeeves is a search engine that encourages the use of question searching

Advanced Searching

• Advanced search features are offered on many engines by going to an “Advanced Search” page and making selections

• This is effective in narrowing search returns to a specific topic or phrase

Google Advanced Search

Getting’ it – Do you?

• What is the difference between a Search Engine and an Internet Guide?

• Why do search engines return different results for the same search query?

Getting’ it – Do you?

• Which Boolean search term broadens a search?

• Which Boolean search term narrows a search?

• What built-in tool in most search engines is helpful in narrowing a search?