EFFICIENT SEARCHING WEB DESIGN COURSE —
FIND WHAT YOU WANT TO FIND

Things to know:

Search Engines vs. Directories and Meta-Search Engines

How a search engine works:

SPIDERS

Search Engines employ a program called a spider, also called a crawler. The spider visits a web page, reads it, and then follows links to other pages within the site. The spider, depending on what type of search engine it’s working for, can record the just the title, the whole home page, or the whole web site. The spider returns to the site on a regular basis, such as every month or two, to look for changes.

INDEX

Everything the spider finds goes into the second part of the search engine, the index. The index, sometimes called the catalog, is like a giant book containing a copy of every web page that the spider finds. If a web page changes, then this book is updated new information.

SEARCH ENGINE SOFTWARE

Search engine software is the third part of a search engine. This is the program that sifts through the millions of pages recorded in the index to find matches to a search. The software also helps rank the returns in order of what it believes to be most relevant. This is how a search engine decides what to show you.

How a directory works:

A directory such as Yahoo depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. The sites are then catalogued into categories, again depending on where the editor decides to put them. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.

What is a Meta-Search Engine, and why will I use one from now on?

A meta-search engine looks through more than one search engine and simply displays the results. They save you time spent searching different search engines. Their drawback is that they do not display as many results and often the results that are displayed are shown in lesser detail. Some meta-search engines do not remove duplicates either, so you end up with the same page listed a bunch of times.

What is Deep Crawl?

A search engine is said to deep crawl if it records information about a website’s linked pages, that is, pages that are not the home page. A search engine doing deep crawls will list many pages from a web site. Other engines will usually list far fewer pages from a site. Current search engines that conduct deep crawls are AltaVista, Google, Inktomi, and Nlight. Deep crawl engines return a lot of extraneous info, but make a good last resort.

Is there any difference in the big search engines?

They are different, as they will clamor to convince you. Sometimes the differences are minimal to the end user. You should become comfortable with a number of search tools. If one doesn’t work, you can try another. You can find a comprehensive ranked listing of major search engine reviews at:

www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/reviewchart.html

When searching, here are some tricks to try:

Boolean Operators

Boolean means one way or the other. A Boolean question can only have two answers. Yes or no. Off or on.

Boolean symbols that can be used to aid in searching:

AND: Finds only documents containing all of the specified words or phrases. Peanut AND butter finds documents with both the word peanut and the word butter.

OR: Finds documents containing at least one of the specified words or phrases. Peanut OR butter finds documents containing either peanut or butter.

Symbols are also used in Boolean searching

+  Inserted without spaces before a word means that word MUST be contained in the document. Peanut +butter finds documents that may or may not include Peanut, but will always include butter.

-   Inserted without spaces before a word means that word MUST NOT be contained in the document.        Peanut -butter finds documents that may or may not include Peanut, but will never include butter.

Quotes (“ “) inserted around a string of words finds documents with those words right next to each other, exactly like you typed them.

Edità Find (Ctrl +F)

Find what you’re looking for in a retrieved page instead of reading the whole dang thing. This trick will save you so much time!

Think of words that mean the same thing.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for think of words or phrases that mean the same thing or are related. Make a list. You’d be surprised at what you can find.

Try the URL

Type in www”the company”.com or www.”the item”.com. Silly, but it works.

Copy your search terms.

Use Edità Copy on your search terms. If your search doesn’t work out you can try looking for the same thing on a different search tool.

Search for a topic specific search engine.

You’ll find your question about anything Filipino easier to answer at the official Philippines search engine. There are a number of topic specific search tools out there. Try searching for “medical search engine”.

Ready, Set, Search! Searching sites to checkout

A couple of big guys:

a)       www.yahoo.com

i)         A human compiled directory

ii)       The most visited site on the Internet, lots of good stuff.

b)       www.altavista.com

i)         The largest search engine. Alta Vista utilizes deep crawl, which makes it a good last resort.

Meta-Searchers

c)       www.askjeeves.com

i)         You can ask questions in plain English

ii)       Amazing built in database of questions and answers

iii)      Searches a number of other search engines and displays the results in easy to scan pull-down menus

iv)      Children’s search www.ajkids.com voted best children’s search engine by PC Magazine

 

Good Search Sites

e)       www.google.com/

i)         Google is a new kind of hyperlink based search engine. They subscribe to the idea that a link to a site is an endorsement of that site. Google uses a complicated mathematical analysis, calculated on more than a billion hyperlinks on the web, to return high-quality search results so you don't have to sift through junk.

ii)       Unlike many other search engines, Google tries to return results where your search terms are in close proximity to one another. If you’re searching for “Dog pound” You don’t want sites that talk about the weight of dogs.

f)         www.go.com

i)         Go.com’s “Search within these results” helps you to narrow down your search when you get the dreaded “10 million sites matched your search”.  You can slowly narrow your search until you are left with only a couple of sites.

ii)       They list reviewed sites first, trying to find the best sites on the web.

iii)      Go.com highlights your search terms where found in the website.

Couldn’t I just get someone else to do the work?

g)       www.looksmart.com/live/

i)         This amazing service employs professional web surfers who get back to you within twenty-four hours. They’ll answer questions on any subject and will find that hard to find site for you. 

h)       www.about.com

i)         Their “experts” have searched the web so you don’t have to! The Mining Co, recently sold to About.com, is a network comprising hundreds of dedicated, topic-specific human experts. They find all the good links and let you know what to try.

i)         (Newsgroups)

i)         Usenet News is the official name of a part of the Internet known as the "Newsgroups", a vast, incredibly varied collection of bulletin boards where individuals post messages and others read them and respond to them.  There are currently over 20,000 different newsgroups organized around every imaginable topic. You’d be surprised at how willing some people are to help you out, sometimes at length!

j)         www.chatlist.com/

i)         Ask someone something in real time, or just get to know some folks.

I’ll look around if I can get something for free…

k)       www.shareware.com/

i)         Search through more than 250,000 free shareware files and applications

Searching for specifics.

l)         www.usps.com/

i)         Find those pesky zip codes      

m)     www.pc411.com

i)         Find business using their name or phone number

n)       www.555-1212.com/

i)         Find people and business using the largest database available, the phone companies! Reverse look-up, too.

o)       www.mapquest.com

i)         Get Maps and driving directions

q)       www.nytimes.com/library/tech/reference/cynavi.html

i)         This is the page that the New York Times sends their reporters to when they have to look for something. They should know.

s)       http://www.learn2.com/

i)         Learn some stuff, fool! Great how to stuff here. Fix a sink, buy a car.

Free Search Program

t)        http://express.infoseek.com/subdocuments/express_details.html

i)         Go Express Search is an Internet search application that you install on your computer, just like your browser or your e-mail software. It efficiently and simultaneously searches using the best Internet search engines. Go Express Search doesn't just find information for you, it also stores the results on your disk so you can browse them later offline, organizes them in a clear manner and removes duplicates automatically. Go Express Search also has many of the cool features as Go.com, such as the search within results option.

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