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

president Washington

• Enter words connect with AND - it will include

sites where both words are found
• Uses: joining different topics
(ie. “global warming” AND California
 Boolean Searching - OR

dogs cats

• 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”)
 Boolean Searching - NOT

Washington school

• 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)
 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?