Welcome to Internet Search Techniques Session

Diploma Programme, 2015EISHCMC

Mr. ZakirTeacher-Librarian

Internet Search TechniquesHow to Search Online Resources

Search Engine

A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The information may be a specialist in web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories.

Keyword Search EnginesYou know what you're looking for, and can describe it with some keywords or phrases.

Google (www.google.com)(hybrid) Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) (hybrid) Bing (www.bing.com) WebNocular (www.webnocular.com) Slikk (www.slikk.com), etc.

Index or Directory based search enginesThese search engines arrange data in hierarchies from broad to narrow. Good if you need an overview of a subject or you're not entirely sure of what you want. For example-

Yahoo Directory (www.yahoo.com) Open Directory (www.dmoz.org)

Meta/ Multi Search EnginesMeta search engines take the results from all the other search engines results, and combine them into one large listing. Examples of Meta search engines include:

Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com) Dogpile (www.dogpile.com) Forelook (http://www.forelook.com) for Google, Bing, Delicious, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Wolfram, etc.

Types of Search Engines

Google!Google: Google is an American multinational corporation which provides Internet-related products and services, including internet search, cloud computing, software and advertising technologies. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while both attended Stanford University.

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California.

How does Google work? Google is a full-text search engine, which uses computerized

"spiders" to index millions, sometimes billions, of pages, allowing for much narrower searches than searchable subject index, which searches only the titles and descriptions of sites, and doesn't search individual pages

Google isn’t case-insensitive. If you search for Three, tHRee, THREE, or even THREE, you get the same results.

Singular is different from plural. Searches for apple and apples turn up different pages.

The order of words matters. Google considers the first word most important, the second word next, and so on

Google ignores most little words, including "I," "where," "how," "the," "of," "an," "for," "from," "how," 'it," "in," and "is,“. Google ignores most punctuation, except apostrophes, hyphens, and quote marks

Google returns pages that match your search terms exactly Google search word limit is 32

How does Google Work? (cont…)

Matt video

Google Web Search Basics

1. Basic Boolean Search Google's Boolean default is AND, which means that if you enter

query words without modifiers, Google will search for all your query words. Like- Search Technique= Search AND Technique.

If you prefer to specify that any one word or phrase is acceptable, put an OR (in capital letter), lower case or won’t work correctly. For example: enter Yahoo OR Google.

A computer programming character | can work like OR (e.g. Yahoo | Google)

If you want to search for a particular term along with two or more other terms, group the other terms within parentheses, like so “search techniques” (Yahoo OR Google)

Google Web Search Basics2. Phrase Searches

Enter key words search techniques. Google will find matches where the keywords appear anywhere on the page.

If you want Google to find you matches where the keywords appear together as a phrase, surround them with quotes, like this “search techniques”

3. Negation If you want to specify that a query item must not appear in your

results, prepend a (minus sign or dash): “search techniques” –Google. This will search the pages that contain “search techniques”, but not the word Google

Note that the symbol must appear directly before the word or phrase that you don't want. If there's space between, as in the following query, it won't work as expected “search techniques” – Google

4. Explicit Inclusion Google will search for all the keywords and phrases that you

specify, however, there are certain words that Google will ignore because they are considered too common to be of any use in the search (e.g. “a”, “the”, “of”, etc.)

You can force Google to take a stop word into account b

Google Web Search Basics

5. Synonyms The Google synonym operator, the ~ (tilde) character, pre-pended to

any number of keywords in your query, asks Google to include not only exact matches, but also what it thinks are synonyms for each of the keywords. Searching for: ~ape turns up results for monkey, gorilla, chimpanzee, and others (both singular and plural forms) of the ape or related family, as if you'd searched for: monkey gorilla chimpanzee (Synonyms are bolded along with exact keyword matches on the results page, so they're easy to spot)

6. Number Range The number range operator, .. (two periods), looks for results that fall

inside your specified numeric range (e.g. digital camera 3.5 megapixel $800..$1000)

You can also use the number range syntax with just one number, making it the minimum or maximum of your query (e.g. digital camera ..5 megapixel $800..)

7. Simple Searching and Feeling Lucky The I'm Feeling Lucky™ button is a thing of beauty. Rather than giving

you a list of search results from which to choose, you're whisked away to what Google believes is the most relevant page given your search (i.e., the first result in the list). Entering Washington post and clicking the I'm Feeling Lucky button takes you directly to http://www.washingtonpost.com.

8. Searching Within Your Results Help you narrow down your results to find the really relevant pages

within your results pages only.

Click Search within results link at the bottom of every results page. It will shows below and you can enter another keyword

Google Web Search Basics

1. Use Rare Words : The more unusual or uncommon the keywords you use are, the more specific the results will be. Taking a moment to think of a valid yet uncommon word is a valuable technique. Like- alcohol and Vodka.

2. Most Important Word First: From personal experience with Google, I have found putting the word that is most important to your search in first, gets slightly better results.

3. Reverse Questions: Search engines look for pieces of text that match your query. Web pages are more likely to contain answers than questions - so search for the answer. Phrase your query how you would expect the answer to read - the difference appears slight, but it makes a huge difference. Say- "IRS stands for" rather than "What does IRS stand for?" "sky is blue because" instead of "Why is the sky blue?"

4. Dead Link Solutions: Try shortening the URL to the next subheading. Keep doing so until you get to the point that works. Then browse from there to see if you can track down the file that you want. Example- If http://www.spock.com/jim/life/not_as_we_know_it.html returns an error, Try http://www.spock.com/jim/life/ and if you still get an error, try http://www.spock.com/jim/ and so on down to the root domain http://www.spock.com

Tips for Searching the Web

What Matters In My Search Query?

1 Every word matters.

Try searching for [who], [the who], and [a who]

2 Order matters.

Try searching for [blue sky] and [sky blue]

3 Capitalization does not matter.

Try searching for [barack obama] and [Barack Obama]

4 Punctuation does not matter.

Try searching for [red: delicious! apple?] and [red delicious apple]

* There are some exceptions!Can you think of any? Click here for a few examples.

Think Before You Search

What am I looking for?

How would I talk about this?

How would someone else talk about this?

What keywords could I use in my search query?

Which of these keywords are common or general words? Which would be more specific? Are there better words I could use?

What kind of results am I looking for?

Do I want a definition, a database, a list, a map, an image, a video, or something else?

How can I describe this

better?

What do I want? What am I trying to find? What am I trying to find out?

Pitfalls

endless links that leads to getting lost

data traffic takes eternity to download

too many; too few; many irrelevant sites

information overload

Solutions

• stop / try another search

• try it another time /site; change ISP

• refine or vary your search

• search with a more specific question in mind

6.1 Tips for Searching the Web

Special Syntax to get specific information site: allows you to narrow your search by a site or by a top-

level domainsite:edu

link: returns a list of pages that link to the specified URL. Enter link:www.google.com and you'll get a list of pages that link to the Google home page, http://www.google.com (not anywhere in the google.com domain)

cached: finds a copy of the page that Google indexed even if that page is no longer available at its original URL or has since changed its content completely.

Similar: To find similar information, website or documents.

File type: searches the suffixes or filename extensions"leading economic indicators" filet type:ppt

define: gives you a page full of definitions of a word from around the Web

Quiz

Advanced Image Search

Advance Image Search

What is Google Scholar? Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly

literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps

you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.

Google Scholar and its Features

Setting Preferences

Setting Preferences (cont…)

• Use a query containing WHOIS to identify the owner of a particular website.• If you see a second company listed as a contact on the WHOIS page, then a

relationship exists between the two companies; you can then do another search to determine that relationship.

• Example: [whois] finds WHOIS registries you can use. Find the search box for the registry, and enter [zagat.com]. See that Google is the registrant. Search for [google zagat], which leads to the information that Google acquired Zagat.

• The US Chamber of Commerce operates the WHOIS search available at http://www.internic.net/whois.html; alternative WHOIS registries also exist.

• If you don’t know a company's website, you can search for the company’s name in Google and locate the web address.

There is on parameter to justify the authenticity of websites. However these might be the part of bona-fide websites links.

.org; .edu; .gov; .mil; .au/ .ca/ .my/ .vn/ .bd etc

Quiz

How to find the authenticity of websites?

“Google Can Bring You Back 100,000 Answers, A Librarian Can Back You The

Right One”-Neil Gaiman

Q&A