University of 8 Mai 1945, Guelma

Department of English

2021/2022

Online Research/Master2 Lecturer: Fayrouz MERABTI

Lesson Three: Online Search Engines

1. What is Search Engine?

A search engine is a service that allows Internet users to search for content via he World

Wide Web (WWW). A user enters keywords or key phrases into a search engine and receives

a list of Web content results in the form of websites, images, videos or other online data that

semantically match with the search query (Stoltzfus, 2020).

2. What is pdf Search Engines?

It is like an online library whose services are available to the people without any time limit

and charges. In many countries people rely on search engines for education and getting

knowledge and information form books. It's a continuous learning way. These online books

helpful to solve many queries in every field whether it's related to medicine, engineering,

commerce, science, political issues or arts. All documents are free and legal.

People can spend their spare time by online reading of their interesting subjects.

PDF Search Engine provides you the ability to get variety of information for preparing your

lectures, assignments, preparation of tests. It provides best filter, refined, organize and precise

information from eBooks and online material that assists you in your jobs for increasing your

knowledge and meets your job requirement (official pdf Search Engines website, 2020).

3. The Six Best Search Engines for Academic Research:

Google search is the most used engine to search any query. However, when it comes to

academic research, google search engines does not serve the purpose as it does in most cases.

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 University of 8 Mai 1945, Guelma

Department of English

2021/2022

Online Research/Master2 Lecturer: Fayrouz MERABTI

Given below is a list of some of the best academic search engines that will help you get the

research material you want quickly and easily, and without compromising on quality

(Lowcountry Graduate Centre, 2017).

Academic Info

Academic Info contains an in-depth directory of the most useful links and resources within

a specific subject area. You can browse through this website to get a list of useful academic

websites for research. This site also offers online degrees, online courses and distance learning

information from a selection of online accredited schools.

iSeek Education

iSeek is easily one of the best and widely used search engines for academic research on the

internet. It has been especially designed keeping the students, teachers and scholars in mind.

This search engine shows only reliable and relevant results that ultimately save your time and

enable you to get your work done quickly. You can find safe, authoritative, intelligent and time-

saving resources with iSeek.

Virtual LRC

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 University of 8 Mai 1945, Guelma

Department of English

2021/2022

Online Research/Master2 Lecturer: Fayrouz MERABTI

Virtual LRC or The Virtual Learning Resources Center allows you to explore educational

sites with high-quality information. It has indexed thousands of academic information websites.

On top of that, with custom Google search, you will be able to get more refined results, which

will help you complete your research in less time. It has been organized by teachers and library

professionals around the world to provide students with great resources for academic

assignments and projects. In short, Virtual LRC is the best place to start looking for research

material that can help you in your studies.

Refseek

Refseek is an academic search engine which is simpler than Google even in appearance.

Refseek does not claim to offer more results than Google. Instead, it removes results that are

not related to science, academia and research. The best thing about Refseek is that you can

search for information related to your subject without getting distracted by sponsored

links.With a database of over one billion documents, web pages, books, journals, newspapers,

online encyclopedias and articles, Refseek is your ultimate companion for academic research.

Google Scholar

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 University of 8 Mai 1945, Guelma

Department of English

2021/2022

Online Research/Master2 Lecturer: Fayrouz MERABTI

As the name suggests, Google Scholar is an academic search engine from the house of

Google. Especially designed to search for scholarly literature, it helps you find relevant

information from the world of scholarly research. With Google Scholar, you can explore many

sources such as books, dissertations, articles and abstracts from various academic publishers,

professional societies, universities and other websites. In May 2014, third-party researchers

estimated that Google Scholar database contains roughly 160 million documents.

Microsoft Academic Search

Microsoft Academic Search is a great search engine from the software giant Microsoft. It

gives you the ability to explore more than 38 million publications. One of the best features of

this search engine is that it provides trends, graphs and maps for your academic research. It

contains more than 40 million publications and 20 million authors.

4. How to use Search Like a Pro:

Searching with regular sentences will only get you so far – if you need to find something a

bit tricky turn to these advanced yet simple methods. Search engines are pretty good at finding

what you’re looking for these days, but sometimes they still come up short. For those occasions

there are a few little-known tricks which come in handy.

So here are some tips for better googling (as it’s the most popular search engine) but many

will work on other search engines too.

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 University of 8 Mai 1945, Guelma

Department of English

2021/2022

Online Research/Master2 Lecturer: Fayrouz MERABTI

4.1. Exact Phrase:

The simplest and most effective way to search for something specific is to use quote marks

around a phrase or name to search for those exact words in that exact order. For instance,

searching for Joe Bloggs will show results with both Joe and Bloggs but not necessarily placed

sequentially. Searching for “Joe Bloggs” will surface only those that specifically have the

name Joe Bloggs somewhere on the page. The exact or explicit phrase search is very useful for

excluding more common but less relevant results.

4.2. Exclude Terms:

If exact phrase doesn’t get you what you need, you can specifically exclude certain words

using the minus symbol. A search for “Joe Bloggs” -jeans will find results for Joe Bloggs, but

it will exclude those results for the Joe Bloggs brand of jeans.

4.3. Either OR

Default text searches find results with all the words of the query. By using the OR term you

can search for one or another term, not just all the terms. OR searches can be useful for finding

things that you’re not sure which term will be used from a known list.

4.4. The Power of Asterisk:

A search for architect* will search for architect, but also architectural, architecture, architected,

architecting and any other word which starts with architect.

5. List of all Search Engines links:

 Pdf Search Engine: http://www.pdfsearchengine.net/

 Academic Info: http://www.academicinfo.net/subject-guides

 Iseek: http://education.iseek.com/iseek/home.page

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 University of 8 Mai 1945, Guelma

Department of English

2021/2022

Online Research/Master2 Lecturer: Fayrouz MERABTI

 Virtual Learning Resources Centre: http://www.virtuallrc.com/

 Microsoft Academic Search: https://academic.microsoft.com/home

 Ecosia search: https://www.ecosia.org/

 Google Scholar search: https://scholar.google.com/

By the end of the session students are tasked to make a search using different search engines.

Given below is a link of a video tutorial on how to search like a Pro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0DQfwc72PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVV_93mBfSU