Lesson Objectives

• To learn how to search on the Web when you do not know a URL by using a search engine
• To learn how to access a search engine from the Netscape Netcenter site
• To learn the advantanges of using a search engines from its own home page site
• To understand the advantages of using a directory site or the directories on the search engine home pages
• To learn how a search engine works and how you can become a better searcher when you use a search engine
• To learn the advantages and disadvantages of metasearch engines
• To learn how to evaluate search results found by a search engine

Searching When You Know Your URL

So far you have traveled around the Internet by visiting Web sites that have appeared in these lessons as hyperlinks. These sites have been arranged into subject categories, they have been previewed and selected because they are well-designed and useful, annotations describe what you are likely to find at each site, and a clickable link gives you direct access to each site on the review page.

If you have liked some of the sites you have seen, you may have printed out a page from the sites with the URL recorded on the page, or copied down the URL so that you can return to the same Web site by typing in the URL in the Location box of the Web browser at some other time.

For people exploring the Web sites noted in the lessons using a commercial Web browser such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer and using a privately-accessible computer, you may have bookmarked the sites you would like to see again, saving a hyperlink to the site address in the memory of your computer and saving you some typing time later.

Internet addresses are advertised everywhere. Internet users and the owners of Web sites will often recommend a URL worth visiting. When you see an address for a site that you think you would like to visit, you may copy down the URL and search for the site the next time you access the Internet.

Visiting Web sites included as hyperlinks on someone's home page, typing into a browser location box the URL for a particular site, and clicking on your own bookmark for a site are three common ways to find information on the Internet. But what do you do when you can't think of a specific URL that might give you information about your topic, or when you have checked the hyperlinks on a page that you think might help you but the links do not suit your needs, or when you know the name of a business or organization but do not know their Internet address?

Search Engines

Fortunately, for information seekers using the Internet who have a topic in mind and need to see the sites that will help them the most, there are many sites on the Internet called Search Engines that retrieve a list of the URLs for numerous Web sites in response to a user's request for specific search terms.

Commercial Web browsers were designed to promote searching the vast body of the Internet for any piece of information. Browsers include an icon for the Search function as part of the standard icon bar. When you click on Search using the Netscape Navigator browser, for example, or choose Search Internet from the Edit drop down menu, you will be taken to Netscape's own Web site, Netcenter (home.netscape.com/escapes/serach/ntsrchrnd-2.html).

Features of the Major Search Engines

The Netcenter site gives easy links to a few of the major search engines. Currently the engines offered include Netscape (by Excite), Excite (www.excite.com), Infoseek (www.infoseek.com), Lycos (www.lycos.com), Altavista (digital.altavista.com), and LookSmart (www.looksmart.com). Another popular search engine, Hotbot (www.hotbot.com), is listed below the main choices.

Any time you click on Search from the Netscape Navigator browser icon bar, a search engine is randomly highlighted and some of its options come up within the Netcenter screen.

The options on the Netcenter page for all the search engines include links to categories and a search box.

You may begin your searching with the engine Netcenter has chosen for you or you may click on one of the other engines listed and begin your search with the engine you have selected.

The search engines listed on the Netcenter page can also be accessed directly through their own URLs.

Using the search engines from their own home pages will give you additional options such as using chatrooms and e-mail. The search engine home pages may also include quick access to news, the weather, stock information, maps, telephone directories and other ready-reference tools. The search engine home pages will also often include a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page, help screens with searching tips, access to an advanced search engine (with appropriate help screens), the opportunity to add the URLs for your own Web pages to the search engine database and the chance to create a personalized start-up home page.

Search Engines and Directories

Each of the major search engines offer browseable subject categories arranged as directories to Web sites. Selecting one of the subject categories from the directory and then looking further into the sub-categories that are likely to follow will eventually lead you to listings of Web sites appropriate to that topic.

One of the first Web sites to offer a categorical arrangement of other Web sites is the directory site Yahoo. Its categories are typical of those that the major search engines have adopted and include: Arts & Humanities, Business & Economy, Computers & Internet, Education, Entertainment, Government, Health, News & Media, Recreation & Sport, Reference, Regional, Science, Social Science, Society & Culture.

These major categories are clickable, as are the subcategories under each. Clickable options under Regional, for example, on the opening screen of Yahoo, include Countries, Regions, and U.S. States.

Clicking on a major category in Yahoo will bring up a longer list of subtopics. Business & Economy, for example, includes 39 subtopics including Companies, Free Stuff and Products and Services.

After you have chosen your category and subcategory using the directory Yahoo, you will eventually come to a list of links to Web sites that fit within that category.

Yahoo gives access to over half a million web sites. A person examines and classifies a Web site before it is included in the Yahoo index. This process assures that a search within a topic on Yahoo brings up Web sites that focus directly on this topic.

This method of searching through the categories of a directory works similarly on the major search engine sites that offer category indexes. The resulting list of links for any topic may appear to be limited, but you are assured that these results are appropriate for your information needs.

Search Engine Keyword Searching: General Searching

Using a directory subject guide can be the best method to perform an accurate search for any information that fits neatly within the categories offered by a search engine or a directory site. But what do you do when your topic does not neatly fit into one of the given categories, or when your search is for a combination of different pieces of information, or if you are searching for the home page for a known business or organization and you cannot remember or don't know the URL?

Search engines are best known for their ability to help information seekers who find themselves in these situations. A search engine Spider (also known as a Crawler or Robot) will regularly visit servers hosting Web sites on the World Wide Web. The Spider moves from page to page through hyperlinks, collecting copies of every new or updated page it sees. The search engine stores the copies of the Web pages in a giant database that is much larger than the databases that comprise the directory Web sites such as Yahoo. One of the biggest search engine databases, Altavista, for example, is said to contain 140 million Web pages.

Every search engine contains a keyword search box on its home page. This is an area where you can point the mouse, click to lock the cursor in place and then type in your search word or words. Other Web sites use similar empty input boxes as part of forms that you will be able to fill out and submit online. You will use the same method of pointing and clicking the mouse within the box to lock the cursor into place before you begin typing on any home page that allows user to input text. If you try to type without positioning the cursor and locking it in place first, your typing will not be registered on the screen and you will not be able to submit your search words or form.

When you use a search engine keyword search box, the search engine will look for a match between the words you type in and what it has found on the pages stored in its database. Because the search engine has such a large database, keyword searches will typically turn up many pages, often thousands of pages, for whatever word or words you have searched.

You are likely to get a very long list of search results for many words you search when you use a search engine.

A limited number of your search hits will be presented on the first screen. You will be able to move ahead, page by page, to view more results.

Search engines will rank the results list, presenting the most relevant addresses first. The search engine may assign a relevancy value to each item in the results list. According to a search engine, a site to which it assigns a 100% relevancy value is the most relevant site for your search. Beware, though, that home page designers can construct their Web pages in ways that will inaccurately make a page seem relevant for certain search words, when upon examination, you will see that the page is not relevant.

A search engine determines relevance based on the position of the search words in the document retrieved and the frequency of occurance of each word. When the keywords appear in the document title or in the one of the first few paragraphs, the search engine will assign the document a higher position of relevance. If your search words occur frequently in a document, the search engine will consider this document to be relevant.

Search Engine Keyword Searching: Refining Your Search

Learning how to limit the results that a search engine retrieves can give you a list of Internet sites that is more useful for your research than an unlimited results list. Most search engines allow you to refine your search and give you suggestions on their Help or Tips screens.

Some search engines allow different levels of searching such as Simple Searching and Advanced Searching. A number of engines allow you to limit the time frame of your search. One search engine, Hotbot (www.hotbot.com), allows you to limit the date and language of pages searched. Advanced search options allow you to limit a search within a particular top level domain name (e.g., .edu, .com, .net, etc.) or a to specify that hits must contain certain types of media files.

Depending on the search engine you use, your search results may be affected by a number of factors including whether or not you use:

• Capitalization
• Parenthesis or quotation marks around phrases
• Connective words such as and, or and near or connective symbols such as "+" between individual words
• Spelling and word form variations (for example, teach, teacher and teaching or woman and women.

How to Search the Web: A Guide to Search Tools (daphne.palomar.edu/TGSEARCH) provides summaries of the search tips for each of the major search engines.

Exercise: Search the Internet!

MetaSearch Engines

Several sites on the Web will allow you to search your keyword(s) on a number of the major search engines at the same time without your needing to go to the home page for each search engine separately. Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com), for example, gives you a single text box for keyword entry, returns up to ten URLs for the seven search engines it visits, and returns an integrated list of results from the different engines.

Because Metacrawler only allows you to enter your keyword(s) in a single search box for all of the search engines, searching for information using Metacrawler may prevent you from fine-tuning your search using techniques that are unique to any one of the search engines.

Another metasearch engine, Super Seek (www.super-seek.com), allows you to search up to 11 multiple search engines using the single keyword entry box just as you were able to search in Metacrawler. Super Seek also allows you to search multiple search engines from a single screen, with separate keyword entry boxes for each search engine. The separate boxes allow you to use search strategies that may be specific to a certain search engine.

A search in Super Seek may be quite slow, depending on how many search engines you request for the search. It may also be difficult to find your results when you search with Super Seek. The results for each search engine will open a separate browser window. As the windows open, they will appear as option buttons on the bottom bar of a Windows95 screen.

When You Know the Name But Not the URL

Very often Internet searchers are sure that a business, organization or educational institution has a Web site but they may have trouble finding the site on the Web when they use a search engine. A good way to find the Web site for a name you know is to click on the location box in your browser and type in a guess for what the URL is likely to be. Many groups, particularly businesses and organizations, have been careful to have their domain names correspond to their trademark names so that the public can find them easily on the Web.

When guessing a domain name, keep in mind if the group you are seeking is a business, an organization, an educational institution or a part of the government. When you type the URL you think may be correct in the location box of your browser, begin with www., add the name as you know it, and end with the appropriate suffix for the type of your group (e.g., .com, for a business, .org., for an organization (used for charities or cultural institutions such as a museum or a theater company), .edu for an educational institution (usually used for colleges and universities, also may be used for museums) .gov for a branch of the government). Type with lowercase letters. Then send the browser out to find the site.

If this technique does not work, you can try a URL that uses an acronym for the group name (a word made up from the first letters or parts of each of the words in the group title) instead of the name that you know or try separating the words of the group name with hyphens (-) or an underscore mark (_).

When guessing a URL, you may want to use this shortcut when you type. The Netscape browser will allow you to type the middle part of a top level domain name for .com sites into the location box. You don't need to type www. or .com. If you type mtv into the location box, for example, you will be taken immediately to the Web site for MTV.

Evaluating Search Results

Although search engines on the Internet will rank the search results for relevancy, give you the opportunity to refine your search and also provide the option of using their own directories to be precise about your topic, you will be the ultimate judge of how effective you find a search engine to be in helping you retrieve information about your topic.

The World Wide Web has provided many with the opportunity for self-publication. In traditional publishing where authors give what they have written to publishers to print as books or articles, an editor or reviewer usually looks at what the author has given him or her, comments on the content and the manner of writing, and asks for revisions before they will publish an author's work.

When it is possible to self-publish, as it is very easily on the Web, authors are able to say whatever they want, however they want, without considering if their research is accurate and thorough and if their manner is unoffensive.

Authors on the Web include everyone from corporations advertising their goods and services through their Web pages, to educational institutions providing online courses and instructive materials, to individuals with personal interests and talents who would like others to read whatever they have to say or to see images they would like to put on their personal home pages.

Even traditional publishers have turned to the Web and are publishing online versions of what they would have published in print in the past. Information you encounter on the pages of a traditional publisher who has turned to the electronic medium to produce a book, a magazine or a journal is likely to have undergone the same editorial processing that printed material typically passes through.

You as the Internet user searching the Web broadly by using a search engine will encounter pages from authors fitting any one of these categories. You will need to act as an editor and judge yourself, deciding if the information presented on the Web pages you retrieve in well-researched and unoffensive. Your information literacy skills will require that you become aware of who has authored what you read. Large corporations may present attractive and extensive home pages, but their goal may be to convince you that they are superior to their competitors or that you need to buy a product. Furthermore, looking at the home pages of a number of competiting businesses may allow you to compare products, but will not give you the balance of an opinion that will help you decide if you want or need a particular product, regardless of who is selling it.

The home pages of organizations, government and educational institutions may offer a balance to the information found on commercial Web sites. These sites often publish research on a topic that will help you make decisions about everything from what you buy to the lifestyle you choose. Organizations and institutions should have a mission statement available on their Web site and should detail their method of funding and any affiliations they have. Be suspicious of any site for an organization that does not provide this information and read the information that is there carefully. You might find that a Web site that appears to be unbiased is connected in some way to a corporation or institution that may possibly prevent it from being unbiased.

The personal home pages of individuals offer yet another perspective on a topic and vary most extensively in their value for your research. These authors may provide biographical information that will help you decide how knowledgeable they are. An academic affiliation or years of personal experience may enable these authors to claim expertise. Often the home pages of individuals include discussion of a topic that may or may not be well researched. Discussions that include accurate citations to other documents show evidence of the author's research. In addition, home pages for individuals often offer long lists of hyperlinks on a favorite topic. If well arranged and annotated, these home pages published by individuals can be a valuable resource for a researcher searching extensively on a topic. Do not exclude the home pages of individuals automatically when reviewing a list of search results. The focus and diligence of individual authors may make them expert information providers on a subject.

Many Web sites include advertisements as a way to support their presence on the Web. Be aware when you search a Web site, regardless of who is the author, that advertisers may exert some control over the Web site content and prevent what you read from being completely unbiased.

Becoming a Better Searcher

Take some time to experiment with the different search engines on a topic or a number of topics that interest you. See which engine gives you the best results near the top of the results lists. See which search engine you feel the most comfortable using. You might find that one search engine works better for one topic and that another search engine works better for different topic.

Most searches on the Web, no matter how carefully constructed, will still result in a number of hits that you might not find very useful. Keep in mind that as you progress through screens of search results for a single engine, as you move forward, you are less and less likely to find useful information. Set a reasonable page limit for yourself. If you do not find the results you want after looking at up to ten pages, go back and reconstruct your search in the same engine or try using a different search engine.

Using a search engine may be your only way to find a precise piece of information in a very large body of data called the Internet. Practice at searching will improve your skill and make you a better searcher each time you go online.