Guide to Web Searching

Related pages:

Contents

• Introduction  
• Types of Search Tools
• FAQ / Help sections / Booleans
• Subject & Special Purpose Guides
• Recommendations
• More Detailed Sites

Introduction

One way of defining the Web is a massive database of information. This database grows at a phenomenal pace and has no single catalog to organize all its files. To search effectively, you often need to access more than one search service and you may need to apply methods of refining the search.

^____ In searching the web, consider three points: 

• the nature of the topic you're looking for
• how your chosen search tool works
• how you tell the search tool to work for you

^__  First, consider how specific or general your topic is. If you're using very specific and uncommon keywords, you may find useful sources quickly without adding more words or using the advanced search of a database. But if your topic includes general terms, you'll need to add more words and use more than one search service.

^__  Next, think of what actually happens when you use a search engine, a web service that uses a form for searching a database. The program determines how often the words you list (your query) appear in its database and returns a list of hits. The databases for search services are formed in different ways. Those we call catalogs or directories contain selected data. But many services are developed with a robot or bot (also called spider and crawler), a software that explores the World Wide Web by retrieving documents and following all the hyperlinks in them. This information is placed in the database which you search. Even if you're using a comprehensive search service, the database is usually created by automation and contains just the surface information available on the Web; these services do not usually recognize the theme, purpose, or type (media) of information a Web document contains. This type of indexing may be improved if web authors use metadata (data about data) or labels to identify the content of their pages.

^__ Since millions of documents are published on the Web, you often need to direct your search by limiting or expanding. Here are three ways to direct and improve Web searching:

1. follow the search service's own guides;
2. use Boolean operators;
3. use another search tool since there is limited overlap in the databases  (Notess)

Recognize various types of Internet search tools

Some search sites are comprehensive or web-wide search services and some are actually subject guides or catalogs. A subject guide includes only selected sites or those that users have asked the catalog to add to its database. If you're browsing the Web or need help in narrowing a topic you might go to catalogs. If you're seeking fairly specific information, you may choose from several web-wide search sites as well as special purpose guides. Since the web is always in flux the distinctions in the tools are sometimes blurred. For example, many search engines have become portals or gateways to the Internet and offer news, email accounts, and other services. Yahoo began as a catalog but has become an Internet portal, a search service offering email, news, and shopping as well as extensive subject guides covering a wide range of web sites. Yahoo still uses human indexing rather than crawlers or robots to add to its database.

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 FAQ/Help sections / Boolean Operators

Remember most search tools offer a FAQ,  help, or advanced section which explains their unique features and options. See selected search engines.

Many search tools allow Booleans--three simple words which may be added to search terms to improve your query:

• and--use to limit your search
• or--use to expand your search
• not--use to omit unnecessary sites

Subject Guides, Special Purpose Guides, On-Site Searching

In addition to the major search engines, look for three additional categories of search tools on the web: the hundreds of subject guides (also called directories or catalogs); the special purpose guides for finding people, places, jobs, or items like government documents; and the on-site searching offered by many large sites. There is some overlap in these categories.

The subject guides (see Catalogs) range from the databases of Yahoo and Librarians' Internet Index to specialized on-line bibliographies such as Voice of the Shuttle.

The specialized guides include people searches for both email and telephone numbers; the Thomas site (at the Library of Congress) for legislative information; and guides to government documents.

On-site searching can be found at sites like PBS and the Pew Internet and American Life Reports. These search engines can save time in browsing a large site.

Use the Find command under your browser's Edit menu to quickly locate words or phrases on a long web document. This browser feature highlights occurrences of the words on the page.

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Recommendations

To find reliable sources, make use of the college library's online databases which use Internet technology to give you access to databases of both scholarly and general interest journals.

For academic sources on the web, use guides to the Deep Web, such as Google Scholar and Infomine.

In addition, I suggest using the following tips in all searches:

• Be as precise as possible and add as many specific words as you can to narrow the search. This helps to eliminate results you don't want.
• Pay attention to spelling and capitalization. Lower case is insensitive but capitalizing makes your search case sensitive.
• Use more than one service, use the advanced search features, and check services that evaluate.
• Use the help section to learn how the search engine works.
  • For most services, use synonyms and Booleans to either broaden or focus results.
  • Try wildcards after shortening a work (called truncation) if a tool allows to expand a term. For example, for some services, sing* will find sing, singer, singers, singing.

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For more details about search tools and how they work, see these sites:

Barker, Joe. "Invisible Web: What It Is, Why It Exists, How Find It, and Its Inherent Ambiguity." UC Berkeley Library. 2007. http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/InvisibleWeb.html

December, John. "Top Keyword Resources of the Web."  2007.
http://www.december.com/web/top/keyword.html

Lawrence, Steve and C. Lee Giles. "Accessibility of Information on the Web." Nature 400.6740 (8 July 1999): 107-109. InfoTrac Web. Article A55358441.

Notess, Gregg R. Search Engine Showdown: A User's Guide to Web Searching.  1999-2007.
http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/
Reference librarian presents practical and current information on search strategies, including "Search Engine Statistics: Database Overlap."

World Wide Web Consortium. "Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS)." 1997-2005.  http://www.w3.org/PICS/
PICS is a method of applying labels or metadata to web pages.