Finding the Web documents (a.k.a. Web "pages" or "sites") you want can be easy or seem impossibly difficult. This is in part due to the sheer size of the WWW, currently estimated to contain 1 billion documents. It is also because the WWW is not indexed in any standard vocabulary (unlike a library's catalogs which assign Library of Congress or some other widely accepted standardized subject descriptors to their documents, or a journal-article index which uses its standardized subject descriptors).
When you do what is called "searching the Web," you are NOT searching it directly. It is not possible to search the WWW directly. The Web is the totality of the many web pages which reside on computers (called "servers") all over the world. Your computer cannot find or go to them all directly. What you are able to do through your computer is access one of several intermediate databases and/or web-pages which contains selections of other web pages organized to allow you to find other web pages and sometimes other databases. You search these intermediate "search tools," and they can provide you with hypertext links (URLs) to other pages. You click on these links, and retrieve documents, images, sound, and more from individual servers around the world.
Basic searching methods
and language
Many Internet searches end
in frustration for the searcher not because the information is not available,
but because the wrong search terms were entered. The following strategies will
help you obtain more accurate search results: Analyze your
topic--what are you looking for? Searching for very broad subjects,
eg:baseball will produce large and sometimes confusing results. Try to narrow
your search to a particular aspect of a topic, e.g.: a particular baseball team. Select keywords for
your topic Your choice of words to describe a subject may not match the
webpage creators, so be prepared to select synonyms for your topic Check your spelling
Some search engines will attempt to match your request with the properly spelled
words, but don't count on it. Better to check your spelling with a dictionary. Refining your search Even with the most concise
searching terms, search engine indexes will return hits in the thousands.Most
pages will offer you the opportunity to refine your search by either adding
additional terms, limiting to certain dates, or in some instances, suggestions
will be offered on the page. Another way to save
searching time is to use the "advanced" searching options offered on
each search engine page. While each engine may call it something different,
these advanced options help you narrow or focus your search terms at your first
attempt. More
on this topic Using search engine
operators(see
search engine table) Once you have selected
searching terms or phrases the next task is to enter and sometimes combine these
terms for effective results. Search engines offer a variety of features or tools
to enter your query, though they are not all the same, certain general concepts
apply to most. Plain-English searches.
Plain or natural English searches allow the entry of a phrase or sentence in the
query box, such as "where can I obtain tickets for the Olympics?" The
problem with these searches is that they return too many hits. You really
don’t need most of these words and entering "Olympic tickets" or
"tickets for 2000 Olympics" would retrieve better, more concise
results. Phrase searching
Use quotations " " around any word or words that you want searched as
a phrase, e.g.: "goodwill games" The quotations " " keep the
words in order, and the engine will search in that order. + in front of words.
Placing a + in front of a word tells the engine that the word MUST appear in the
results (the + must be right next to the word with no spaces in-between). This
symbol replaces or can be used in addition to the Boolean operator AND. (see
below for explanation) – in front of words
Placing a – in front of a word tells the engine that the word MUST NOT be
included in the results (the – must also be right next to the word with no
spaces in-between). This symbol replaces or can be used in addition to the
Boolean operator NOT. (See below for explanation) Boolean searching
The Boolean operators can be used in place of the + and – in most of the
search engines. They must be capitalized or the engine will not recognize them.
AND links terms that must appear in your results, NOT excludes terms and OR,
while producing large results, is helpful if you are not positive of the term
used to describe something. For example: "speaker of the house" OR
"house speaker." Case sensitivity
Most engines ignore case. Therefore, enter your searches in lower case. It’s
quicker, and you’ll retrieve broader results. However, if you are looking for
a specific person, geographic location, title, capitalize the first letter of
each word. Field searching
Some of the engines allow you to search the fields they have indexed for each
page. These fields include, title, author, URL, domain. The most useful of this
list are the title and domain fields. Entering the title field
tells the search engine to only look for pages that mention the words you have
entered as a title. Chances are good that if the subject you are looking for is
in the title, most of the document will be about that subject. Domains are the types of
organizations that post web pages. The primary ones at this time are: At the end of 1999 there
will be a list of new domain sites. By entering a domain site
in your search query, you can limit results to only pages that have that
extension. Many times students are asked to only use pages that have come from
educational institutions, and this is an easy way to locate these sites. In summary: searching tips
to keep in mind:
.edu (educational institutions)
.com (commercial establishments)
.gov (government agencies)
.org (non-profit organizations)
.net (networks like AT&T, MCI)
.int (international)
.mil (military)