Transcript Researching on the Internet

Researching on the
Internet
When in doubt just Google-It!
4/19/2005
Jim DeCosta
ADM Humphreys College
Search Engines / Directories
 Search Engines come in all colors (bias) and sizes (speed)
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Some limit their search to specific servers, which host very
specific types of information – If you know which engines do
what and if you are often looking for a specific type of data then
you’ll want to bookmark a few of these.
Some use “spiders” to seek out html document headers, which
usually contain key-words that describe content. – Helps the
engine serve up many pages quickly, but leaves out tons of
good information from reputable sources who publish on their
own and are not all that concerned about the masses finding
their sites or they simply don’t take the time to add the keywords to the headers of their pages.
Others search deep into the web, looking not only at the
headers but the hundred’s of millions of pages as well. Google
is an engine of this type. The problems associated with this
type of search is that it often pulls up so much information it
takes a real expert to limit the search to those valuable sites
you are looking for.
The Problem with Search
Engines and the Web
 The web is not indexed
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Therefore there is no one central place
(like a library card catalog) where
information can be organized about
location.
 Search Engines return thousands of
“hits” per search
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Talk about finding a needle in the haystack!
Two Things You Must Do
 Have a clear understanding of how to
prepare your search.
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You must identify the main concepts in
your topic.
 Determine
any synonyms, alternate spellings,
variant word forms for the topic.
 Know how to use the various search
tools available on the Internet.
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Search Engines: Alta-Vista, Google
Directories: Yahoo, WWW Virtual Library
Subject Directories – Good for finding
General Information on popular or scholarly
subjects.
 A subject directory is a catalog of sites collected
and organized by humans.
 Subject directories are often called subject
"trees" because they start with a few main
categories and then branch out into
subcategories, topics, and subtopics.
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To find the homepage for the Los Angeles Dodgers
at Yahoo!, for example, select "Recreation &
Sports" at the top level, "Sports" at the next level,
"Baseball" at the third level, "Major League
Baseball" at the fourth level, "Teams" at the fifth
level, then finally “Los Angeles Dodgers."
Some Popular Directories
Yahoo
Yahoo is the big boy on the block, when it
comes to Internet Directories. It is an
outstanding site for finding popular things of
public interest on the www.
Looksmart
Open
Directory
A good alternative to Yahoo.
About.com
Here you can find an on-line Librarian, each
topic area has an assigned "Guide" responsible
for keeping links in the topic area and writing
additional information on the subject.
Lists scholarly and popular websites.
Three other useful directories for scholarly research are the
Internet Public Library, the Librarians' Index to the
Internet, and the The WWW Virtual Library.
Spiders and Bots
Spiders and Robots –
Crawling around those
telephone, cable lines and
microwave transmissions
from satellites…. Uhk!!
Search Engine Techniques
 You have broken down your topic into
key words and synonyms.
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Topic = UFOs
 ufo
 Flying
saucer
 Area 51
 Missing time
 Aliens
 Close encounters
 Unidentified aircraft
Before you begin the search
 If you are new to search engine use
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Read the main page for instructions
Most engines have help links or links to
advanced searching procedures. Read,
re-read, and read again.
There is no substitute for reading, although
the web has grown to be quite the audiovisual show place, the vast majority of
information still requires that you read with
comprehension.
Use of Boolean Terms
 Uses Boolean operators (and, or , not) to
specify desired results. AND narrows, OR
broadens, NOT excludes. Some search tools
use plus (+) and minus (-) marks instead of
AND & NOT.
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AND
 Tells search engines to look for both or all of the
search terms. “UFO and alien and area 51” will
return only pages where all three are mentioned.
OR
 Tells search engines to look for either search term.
“UFO OR Alien” will return pages in which UFO
and Alien appear, as well as pages in which UFO
or Alien appear alone on the page.
Phrase Searching
 Surrounding text with quotes will order the
search engine to find pages that contain exactly
what is typed between them.
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“can use guys find the wetering bukit” will find only
pages that contain the phrase as spelled; so…..
Check your spelling!
 Combine Phrase Searching with Boolean Terms
or implied Boolean (+/-).
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“World Series” AND Dodgers
+“World Series” + Dodgers
 Note – implied Boolean requires that a + or –
appear before the phrase also.
Letter and Case Interpretation
 Most search engines will interpret lower case
letters as either lower case or capitals.
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If you desire both upper and lower case returned,
then type your request in lower case.
If you want to limit your search then you can use
capital letters “Albert Einstein” or “EMS”.
 Like capital letters, most search engines will
interpret singular case as singular or plural.
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“dog” will return dog, dogs, Dogs, Dog, DOGS, and
DOG.
You can use the plural form to limit your search;
DOGS will return DOGS.
Truncation – Excellent for those who were
too lazy to look up proper spelling.
 Several Search engines support truncation;
which is the use of wild cards in your search
term.
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Common wildcards are *, ?, and #
 To search for all pages containing the letters “ear”,
if you entered “*ear* you would get pages that
contained, pear, ear, ears, pears, hear, hears,
dear, dears, etc.
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The * allows anything to precede or follow from
your inquiry.
The ? Is a single letter holder; thus querying “l?st”
returns list, lost, last, etc.
 # is used as a numerical version of ?.
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Search For
Use
Audio/Music
AllTheWeb | AltaVista | Dogpile | Fazzle | FindSounds.com | FtpFind | Genie Knows |
HotBot Advanced Search | Ithaki | Ixquick | Lycos Music Downloads | Mamma |
Lycos Multimedia Search | Researchville: Audio | Singingfish
Date last modified
AllTheWeb Advanced Search | Exalead | Google Advanced Search | HotBot
Advanced Search | Teoma Advanced Search
Domain/Site/URL
AltaVista | AllTheWeb Advanced Search | AOL Advanced Search | Google Advanced
Search | HotBot Advanced Search | Lycos Advanced Search | Mama Power
Search | MSN Search Search Builder | SearchEdu.com | Teoma Advanced
Search
File Format
AllTheWeb Advanced Search | AOL Advanced Search
Geographic location
AllTheWeb Advanced | Exalead | HotBot Advanced Search | MSN Search Search
Builder
Images
AllTheWeb | AltaVista | The Amazing Picture Machine | Ditto | Dogpile | Fazzle |
Google Image Search | HotBot Advanced Search | IceRocket | Ithaki | Ixquick |
Mamma | Picsearch | Researchville: Images | Yahoo! News Image Gallery
Language
AllTheWeb | AltaVista More Precision | AOL Advanced Search | Google Language
Tools | HotBot Advanced Search | iBoogie | Lycos Advanced Search | MSN
Search Search Builder | Teoma Advanced Search
Multimedia & video
All TheWeb | AltaVista | Dogpile | Fazzle | HotBot Advanced Search | Lycos
Multimedia Search | Mamma | Researchville: Video | Singingfish
Page Title/URL
AOL Advanced Search | Exalead | Google | HotBot Advanced Search | Teoma
Advanced Search
Programming
Language/File
Extension
Exalead Advanced Search | HotBot Advanced Search |
Multiply Your Searching Pleasure
Use Meta-Search Engines
 Meta-search engines search several major
engines at once.
 Meta-Search engines act as brokers or
middlemen for other online search engines.
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Different search engines return different results
based on the information their spiders and bots
have collected.
Utilizing a Meta-Search engine can be a quick way
of determining which search engine is retrieving the
most relevant hits for your particular search effort.
Popular Meta-Search Engines
 DOGPILE
 searches 8 search engines and subject directories
as well as newsgroups, business news, and
newswires. Dogpile supports full Boolean logic and
phrase searching.
 VIVISIMO
 clusters results from 8 search engines and subject
directories into convenient topic categories. Use
implied Boolean logic (+/-) and phrase searching.
 METACRAWLER
 submit queries to 7 search engines and subject
directories. Use implied Boolean logic (+/-) and
phrase searching.
SPECIALTY DATABASES
Specialty databases are dedicated to collecting relevant
sites for a particular subject
 Findlaw – Targets Legal Resources
 Achoo! collects health and medical sites.
 Beaucoup lists more than 1,200 engines,
directories, and indices from around the world.
 Price's Direct Search links to a wide variety of
business, government, humanities, legal, news,
and science databases.
 Search.com, search more than 100 specialized
databases.