Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web Dharmendra S Giri (MCSD)
Email: dharmendra.giri@gmail.com
Blog: http://SliceData.BlogSpot.com 1 LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web With billions of web pages online, you could spend a lifetime surfing the Web, following links from one page to another.
Amusing perhaps, but not very efficient if you're seeking some specific information.
So where do you start? Searching the Internet requires part skill, part luck and a little bit of art.
Fortunately, a number of free online resources help with the hunt. 2 LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web You've probably heard of search engines such as Yahoo!, Google, and Ask.com. There are literally dozens of these tools to help you locate what you're looking for. The trick is understanding how they work so you can use the right tool for the job. 3 LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web Search engines break down into two types: directories and indexes.
Directories, such as Yahoo!, are good at identifying general information.
Like a card catalog in a library, they classify websites into categories, such as accounting firms, English universities and natural history museums.
The results of your search will be a list of websites related to your search term.
For instance, if you are looking for natural history museums, you might use a directory to find it 4 LipNi Services LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web But what if you want specific information, such as biographical information about Leonardo da Vinci? Web indexes are the way to go, because they search all the contents of a website. Indexes use software programs called spiders and robots that scour the Internet, analyzing billions of web pages, newsgroup and blog postings, and indexing all of the words. Indexes like Google and MSN Search identify the text on individual pages of a website that match your search criteria, even if the site itself has nothing to do with what you are looking for. You can often find unexpected gems of information this way, but be prepared to wade through a lot of irrelevant information too. Search results are usually ranked in order of relevancy
--the number of times your search term appears in a document
--or how closely the document appears to match a concept you have entered. 5 LipNi Services LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web Let's perform an online search using three popular search engines--Yahoo!, Google, and Ask.com--so you can see how they work and how you can develop an efficient search strategy.
Here's the challenge: You're planning a trip to San Francisco and you've always wanted to ride a cable car. Do they operate in January and if so, what's the schedule? 6 LipNi Services LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web First we'll try Yahoo!
One trick when searching is to narrow your focus. Entering "San Francisco" in the search box results in over 403 million sites related to the City by the Bay! Entering "cable cars" results in 92 million sites, many of which have nothing to do with San Francisco.
By combing the terms ("San Francisco cable cars"), The search still returns over 10 million sites, along with a brief description of each one. Now you have to visit each site to see if there's any information about cable car schedules.
Fortunately, the first three sites listed all contain information pertinent to our search 7 LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web Now let's try using Google, an index-based search engine. Once again, enter "San Francisco cable cars" in the search box. The Google search results in over 1.5 million documents that match the search terms. Life is too short to comb through all these. The reason for this enormous list is that Google turns up every document that contains the words "San," "Francisco," "cable," and "cars."
To search for documents that contain just this phrase, use quotation marks around the terms ("San Francisco cable cars"). Doing this results in about 46,000 documents. Fortunately, Google smartly ranks sites in order of relevancy and popularity, so the first few have information about schedules.
But even better, try entering "San Francisco cable car schedule". Bingo! Now the list includes just 10 sites. As you can see, the more specific you can be with your search query, the more focused the results. 8 LipNi Services LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web Ask.com uses a technology called natural language query, a fancy way of saying that you can ask your question in plain English. By typing a question like "What is the San Francisco cable car schedule?" you get a list of related pages. Once again, you will have to go to the site, but in this case, it's a no-brainer as one of the choices is "San Francisco Municipal Railway."
Bear in mind that websites tend to change often. These changes are not always reflected in the search engine database, particularly for directories. Typically, websites are registered with search engines when they first go online. After that, changes are not reported generally. To find the most recent information, your best bet is a search engine that use Web-indexing robots, software that constantly search the Internet, recording additions and changes. 9 LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web Refining Your Search
Regardless of which search engine you use, it pays to find out the particulars of how it works.
Take the time to read the search tips on the site. For instance, how does the engine handle searches that include more than one word? Most engines, but not all, return results that include any of the words.
Because there is so much information online, usually you will want to limit the scope of your searches. How do you do this? This is a good point to digress to talk about Boolean operators 10 LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web The English mathematician George Boole developed an algebra of logic that has become the basis for computer database searches.
Boolean logic uses words called operators to determine whether a statement is true or false.
The most common operators are AND, OR and NOT. These three little words can be enormously helpful when doing online searches. A few examples show why. 11 LipNi Services
Metasearches : Metasearches Rather than search each directory or index individually, you can submit your query simultaneously to multiple search engines by doing a metasearch. The Big Four
Whether you want to search for information about cable cars, investments or any other subject, here are our favorites:
Google
Yahoo!
MSN or LIVE
ASK.com
Remember, all search tools are not alike. Each uses a slightly different methodology, so your results will vary. You may not always find what you're looking for on the first try. 12 LipNi Services
Find Information: Searching the Web : Find Information: Searching the Web 13 LipNi Services