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Searching in the Internet |
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What is a search tool?
A search tool is a program which you can use to find
information and documents on the Internet. Most search tools – such as Alta Vista or Infoseek - operate on the World Wide Web, and many
can be accessed from a button on your browser labelled ‘Search’ or
‘Internet Search’. In all cases, the tools look for a word, phrase or other
combination of words that you have entered on an on-screen form.
There are three important things to remember:
- No single search tool indexes the entire contents of the
Internet
- Each search tool may produce different results to the same
search (even where the difference between the tools appears to be superficial – for
example, similar versions of Alta Vista based in different countries)
- Results may differ according to the precise word or
combination of words that you use, how you spell the words, whether you use upper or lower
case characters and in what order you enter the words
Each search tool uses different techniques and software to
index and search the Internet. They are not intelligent in the commonly accepted sense of
the word and will not distinguish between different contexts or understand your
intentions. Some of the tools look at titles, some at summaries of documents that are
hidden to the user, and some look at the whole document. It is relatively easy for web
authors to fool the tools by choosing particular titles for their pages or hiding certain
words or phrases in the documents. This means that some of the answers to your queries are
likely to be completely irrelevant, and others will present themselves as more relevant
than they actually are.
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How do I begin?
After loading a search tool for the first time, always read
the instructions, search options, and restrictions associated with the tool. Remember that
there are two basic approaches to Internet searching – listing and linking. Listing
tools are based on the prior classification of information sources (Yahoo is the best
known of these) while linking tools (for example, Alta Vista) attempt to index everything
on the Internet automatically. The latter are likely to produce more results, the former
to produce more precise results.
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How do I plan a search?
Think about your search before you begin and work out how
best to build your query:
- If you know the area of information relevant to your query,
use a classification-based tool like Yahoo. This will allow you to narrow your search and
follow links to a useful reference.
- If you have a specific name or document title to look for, use
a spider-based tool like Alta Vista and search for that name or title. However, not all
document titles will be registered with these sites, particularly since they do not
necessarily index every page on a site. You may be better advised to use a site-search
tool at dedicated site - for example, an on-line bookstore or a government archive.
- If you are looking for one or more attributes or general
concepts you may need to make several searches and browse several potentially useful
documents in order to derive a specific reference to search on.
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What
keywords should I use in a search?
- Common words make bad searches. Articles, conjunctions and
prepositions are ignored by most search tools unless they are used as boolean operators
(for example, when you search for ‘trade AND union’). Some other words occur so
frequently on the Internet that they produce unmanageably vast numbers of hits even if
they are not ignored. Try ‘information’.
- Use words which differentiate contexts. Dates, titles, URLs,
names, or references to organisations or places can make good keywords.
- If the tool allows you to search for phrases, devise a phrase
which will appear in the documents you want and no other.
- If possible, use precise terms – even jargon.
‘Trade’ and ‘union’ are not good words, since they can be found in a
number of contexts singly and together. ‘Labour’ (or ‘labor’) and
‘union’ would be better, but if you are searching for labour movement sites, you
might find that ‘solidarity’ works even better.
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What do search
results mean?
Your use of search tools will improve if you develop an
understanding of how they work. Analyse the results that each tool gives you in order to
learn how they work. This depends mostly on the kind of information they keep in their
index and how they process keywords. Relevant considerations are whether a tool indexes
entire sites, only home pages, only site summaries, all page titles or only the home page
title, and how the tool handles boolean operators, grammar and spelling (for example, some
tools produce different results depending on the order of terms in a boolean search, some
tools ignore word-endings, and some tools respond to distinctions of letter case).
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Should I
use more than one search tool?
Yes. It’s obvious, really - unless you find exactly what
you want first time, run your search with more than one tool to get a better span of
results.
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What if
my search produces no results?
There can be several reasons for this:
- You may not be using the tool correctly - make sure you
understand how to enter and then run a search.
- The spelling may be incorrect. It may help to use wildcards,
if allowed (for example, ‘empl*’ for ‘employment’,
‘employee’, ‘employer’ and so on). Also, some tools are
case-sensitive.
- You may be using logical or boolean operators incorrectly.
Check this.
- You may be too specific in your search. Try to be more
general.
- You may be missing synonyms or other variations. This is
particularly likely when searching for materials in another country. Expressions and word
spellings are likely to differ. Try common synonyms and spelling variations (for example,
‘labour’, ‘labor’, ‘employees’, and ‘workers’).
- Your search tool may be missing sites for a variety of reasons
(for example, some tools require pages to be registered, and this may not have been done).
Try with another search engine.
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What
if my search produces too many results?
There can be several reasons for this too:
- Your query may be too general. Try to use more specific terms
or to build an expression including as many relevant keywords as possible. You can also
filter out certain documents by excluding their URLs within the query, or focus on
specific URLs by using them as the search terms.
- You may be looking for the wrong word or phrase. Try to find
other words associated with the topic and use them to run a new search or a refined
search.
You may be using words that are too general. Try to use
technical terms, jargon or words with precise meanings.
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