Searching the World Wide Web

The Search Strategy

The ways that most people run into trouble with search engines are:

Not understanding how the engine ranks the hits, and
Not knowing how to do advanced searches with the search engine.

To further complicate things for us, search engines (and web directories, too) often have different "rules" for advanced searches. For one, entering two words one right after the other (i.e. Bird Dog) will search for and retrieve Bird AND Dog on the same page. Another will look for Bird OR Dog and yet another will search the two words as a phrase Bird Dog, because we capitalized the two words. The way to find out how an engine or directory searches is to use the "about" or "help" screens that are linked right off of their main page. You can also take a look at Websites that compare search engine methods side by side – like Search Engine Showdown or Findspot.

How to formulate research queries

These type of strategies should be used when doing any kind of research. However, a well-planned search strategy is of great value especially when searching something as large and evolving as the World Wide Web. Because some search engines index not only the first few important words of a page, but all of the words in the document, it is very important that your search is as specific as possible.

Identify the concept – what is my question? is it clear to me what I want to know?

Do students learn better in traditional classrooms or through Internet classes?

List (or think of) key words for the concepts and questions.

students – college, university students

learning

classroom

Internet

Consider synonyms and variations of the key words.

students – college, university

learning – learning styles

classroom – traditional

Internet – distance education, WebCT, Mallard,

Identify the relationships between the concepts.

students AND learning

distance education AND Internet

college OR university

Decide which search tools (Engine, Directory, etc.) to use.

Google! (http://www.google.com)

Librarian's Index to the Internet (http://www.libraryHQ.com/)

Examine the special search directions for your search tool – either at the engine’s own web site or at a summary site like Search Engine Showdown or Findspot.

Come up with search queries:

Choose Google- using the search directions, we can create the following query to enter in the google search box:

"distance education" Internet learning university students

For further suggestions on how to effectively use search engines, visit some of the additional resources listed below:

General Search Tips

Research Tips State University of New York at Albany Library
This site provides an introduction to searching the Web, with information about how search engines interpret search terms.
Internet Search Strategies from Search Engine Showdown
This guide offers search tips about guessing URLs, using Web directories, and using search engines.
Internet Cheat Sheets from the Grainger Engineering Library
This page offers tips for searching several search engines.

Boolean Logic

Boolean logic is a way to construct search statements using the operators AND, OR, and NOT to create complex searches.

Boolean Tutorial from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Library.

The World Wide Web is not going to replace your local library – especially your University Library! But, it will broaden your field of research, and enable you to find information when you are far from any physical library. As the Web increases in size and as the effort to categorize quality sources within it continues, the search process will become simpler. Keeping up with new search engines and web directories will help in this endeavor. Visit sites like Search Engine Watch (http://www.searchenginewatch.com) to keep abreast of new technologies and new methods of searching.


		University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Gateway Comments to: jstraw@uiuc.edu Last updated 10/15/2002 KG