This is one of a series of articles that are aimed at Easing Your Computer Experience. Comfortable computer use is something that takes time and unfortunately can end up with a lot of frustration for people who do not live and die by their PC (or Mac or Nix box or whatever else), as these people will already, most likely, know these topics. These articles, tutorials, or mini-tutorials will be aimed at newer computer users to help shorten the learning curve, reduce frustration, and increase productivity. Hopefully, we can help to can move you from "Hate the Tool!" to at least"OK with the Tool"! Glowering and Loathing are Bad! Indifference and Excitement is Better!
I always preach the power of the internet and how anything that you want to know can be found on the web. Finding it, however, can be daunting task because not everyone knows how to use a search engine effectively. I going to try to explain some of the basic techniques to make using search engines easier and more effective so your searching experience will be more fruitful. The next article will cover more advanced techniques of searching.
The first question we will answer is what exactly is a Search Engine?
- Search Engine
A search engine is a program designed to help find information stored on a computer system such as the World Wide Web, or a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a list of references that match those criteria. Search engines use regularly updated indexes to operate quickly and efficiently. Without further qualification, search engine usually refers to a Web search engine, which searches for information on the public Web.
Search Engines are applications that allow you to search through the millions and millions of websites for pages that have the words in them that you specify - it is sort of like a card catalog for the web, without all of the organization. =) Examples of well known Search Engines are:
Here is a small listing of the tools that should be in your Basic Search Engine Toolbox:
Do not worry if this looks like math or Greek to you. We will go over these and more in this tutorials. So strap yourself in and lets get this started....
Tool #1 - Concise and Accurate Wording
Perhaps the most important weapon you can use when searching is concise and accurate wording of your search terms. The more accurate you can choose your words the better your search results are going to be. Correct Spelling of search terms is very important. If the word is misspelled you might not find anything on a topic. Searches for bare, bear, baer, or bar will get you very different results if you are searching for brown bears. Not every search engine will "know" what you mean or will be able to suggest correct spellings.
As you search through the pages you find you might find Related Key Terms that more accurately describe or define your topic. Perhaps you did not know much about the topic when you started but as you wander from page to page you get to know the topic and relative terms that will get you better suited web pages for your topic. Remember these and write them down or scribble them in notepad.
Excluded Words
Pretty much every search engine excludes very common words which occur in the respective language that is being searched in. In English the following words when put into a search query will not affect the results and shall be ignored. This list not inclusive and there are many, many more words:
- the, this, that, a
- am, are, was, were, be, being, been, can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must
- with , how
Google also excludes single numbers in a search request. Are there methods around this exclusion if these words are necessary to your search? Yes there are and they shall be covered below.
Case Insensitivity
One thing to keep in mind is that most search engines are case insensitive which means that capital and lower case letters are all the same and shall nnot make a difference it the search results. AirPlane and airplane are the same to a search engine.
Tool #2 - Boolean Logic for Search Engines
All search engines allow the use Boolean Logic in some capacity and that is something that is very important to understand and be able to utilize. I will explain this in the following sections:
Implicit AND operator
Most all search engines force an implied AND, which means that all search terms that you type in are required to be in the document to be returned as a search result. AND means 'must be in included'. If you enter brown bear then the search engine will return all pages which contain the word brown AND bear in it (unless it is on the exclusion list). You do not have to type anything special as this is the default mode of operation.
Explicit OR Operator (OR)
The next tool you can use from your Boolean Bag of Tools is the OR operator. If you know that there are terms that may be equally important to your topic you may use the OR operator. If you are looking hotels in the Hawaiian Islands and there are 2 islands that would be OK for you - the search could be formed as such: Maui OR Hawaii. The search engine will find all documents that mention either Maui or Hawaii for your search results.
Explicit AND operator (+)
All search engines should provide a mechanism to force the inclusion of excluded words by an Explicit AND operator. For most search engines you just put a '+' (addition sign) before the term (with no space) that you want to include. If you are looking for The Mummy you would type in +the mummy. (Note: this is not the most efficient method.)
Explicit NOT (-)
If you want to specifically exclude certain terms from your search results you may use the Explicit NOT Operator which is usually a '-' (subtraction sign) before it (with no spaces). If you are searching for bass and you are not looking for the musical type you could enter bass -music -instrument to ensure that you do not get sites that contain information about music and instruments.
Quotes (" ")
Quotation marks are a very powerful tool that you can use if you want words to be found in a specific order and to include normally excluded words. An important example of this is "To be or not to be." or "The Republic of Czechoslovakia". A phrase made of all excluded words or that require a specific specific order to retain meaning and to obtain pertinent results.
Compound Statements
To ensure that you are aware and that you start thinking this way I want you to know that you can combine all of these tools into one search query: bass "fishing lures" best OR efficient OR performance OR professional -music -instrument
General Search Engine Resources
Search Engine Specific Resources
Boolean Logic Resources
