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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?