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It takes experience to consistently get useful results from Web searches. The more you search, the better your results though, and the easier it gets. It also pays to invest in some self-education along the way.
Learn about search
- Most of search sites have good "Help" sections. It's a good place to learn about searching.
- You'll find About.com's "Search 101" an easy to use tutorial on search.
- See "Executive Summary: The Two-Minute Bottom Line" and much more about search at BrightPlanetTM.
- "Bare Bones 101: A basic tutorial on searching the Web" from the University of South Carolina.
- Tutorial on search strategy and syntax -- A comprehensive, but easy-to-understand tutorial that adventurous searchers will like.
One of the things you'll learn about "search" engines is that they don't actually search the Web. They search their own database, which is built up over time using a Web "spider". What's a spider? Try searching for the phrase "web spider" (use the quotes) and see what you find.
Some spiders don't revisit sites for a long time. The linked page, or even the site itself may go away before the spider gets back to check. That's why you often find dead links in search results.
Which search engine is best?
That's hard for me to tell you. Try a few, and see which ones you like best. Google is the 800 pound gorilla of the search business. Yahoo! and MSN Search and are the main contenders. They, and many other search sites have emulated Google's lean, clean look. Ask Jeeves, and alltheweb are major players too.
Ask Jeeves is nice because you can just enter your search terms in the form of a question. Try "How high is the Eiffle Tower?" (without the caps or quotes) or something else that you've always been curious about.) You can do the same at ixquick -- look for their "Natural Language" feature.
All of these search engines can give good results. It's well worth your while to try more than one if you don't get the results you want right away though. If you want to use a search engine with specific features, New York State University has an extensive list by category.
You could try a metasearch engine instead. They pull in results from several search engines, then combine and rank them. Metacrawler was the original, and ixquick is my favorite. It's fast and yields comprehensive, high-quality results. They're a great way to find information about an obscure topic.
Explore search sites thoroughly. They all do much more than what the opening page shows. Be sure to look at "Advanced Search" at the site. You'll be surprised at what you can do at a search site these days.
Browse for information
Many people find it easier to find things on the Web by using an Internet directory. Directories are different from searches. They're created by humans rather than Web "spiders", which blindly index words on Web pages. Search engines are powerful, but people can see relevance and connection much better than they do. The directories at dmoz.org, Yahoo! and Google are among the best.
Search tips
- Try to use unique search terms that you're sure would be on a Web page you're looking for. Example: I used [kitchen master compactor bag] (without the brackets) and got exactly what I was looking for. It's what was printed on the side of one of the bags.
- If you think a specific phrase appears on pages related to your topic, use " ". For example, enter "Lance Armstrong".
- Use "define: search term(s)" at Google to get the definition of a word or phrase. For example, [define: infield fly rule], Do you know the reason for the infield fly rule?
- If you're looking for people, email addresses, etc., try specialized searches.
- Save your successful searches as "favorites" (bookmarks) in your browser if you'll be coming back to them again.
- Google keeps a "cached" version of pages which you can retrieve in case the page you wanted is no longer available at the website.
- Find some powerful search tips at the University of South Carolina.
Search cybercoyote.org
This local search tool limits your search to just this Web site. That way you won't need to sift through a vast number of results from all the other sites out there on the Web.
Learn more about the quirks of this search tool, and how to use a similar Google tool, at the site search page.
Resources
- Beyond Google -- Everything you ever wanted to know about searching. You'll probably want to click the "Printer Friendly Version" link at the bottom of the article.
- Directory.net's "Searching" page has links to extensive information on most aspects of searching the Internet, including reviews, .
- The New York Times has a splendid guide to finding all sorts of information on the Internet.
- From the University of California: "Recommended Search Strategy: Analyze your topic & Search with peripheral vision"
Note: Research for this page was done with the help of search "plug-ins" for Firefox.
They're available for Mozilla or Firefox at Mycroft.org.
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