Using Search Engines

Lecture Summary:

Search Engines are websites with large indexes of commonly accesed resources in a searchable database.
Before researching one needs to have an idea of how information is stored and accesed on the web. There are three categories of information on the web the free visible web which contains all the publicly availed web pages and can be accessed through a good search engine, free invisible web which contains the sites that provide articles and information free to its users but the content is accesible by going straight into the site, and paid database over the web this category contains commercial databases that libraries subscribe to containing scolarly journals, newspapers and court cases.
Search Tools:
Search tools consist of two categories, Search Engines and Directories. Search Engines consist of the interface you use to type in a query, an index of Web sites that the query is matched with, and a software program (called a spider or bot) that goes out on the Web and gets new sites for the index. Directories are categorized lists of sites picked out by human editors. Example include Yahoo, Look Smart, and Snap.
Types of Seach Engines
Google
Yahoo
Altavista
All the web
Problems with Searach Engines is that they return too many results for a query. They also have limited filtering or results to a searh query.
Directories
Dmoz
Google Directory
Yahoo Directory
Look Smart
About
US Search Engines Rankings as of September 2007.
Of the 9.4 billion search performed
– Google 57%
– Yahoo 23.7%
– Microsoft 10.3%
– Ask 4.7%
– Time Warner including AOL 4.5%.
Search Engine Interaction
Types of queries
Keyword
Phrase
Boolean

Advance / Engine features
Strategies and Key word choices

What civilisation is associated with the once great city of Machu Picchu the spectacular ruins of which were rediscovered in 1911? The most effective strategy would be to use the key word Machu Picchu

Search Tips
Use as many search tools as possible
Read the search tip or help information at each search engine
Guess a location
For a keyword search use several words
Know what you want
Use advanced search functions to narrow down the search


Tutorial Summary:

The tutorial involves student being exposed into a range of search engines such as google, yahoo and Alltheweb to use for simple and advanced search for information. Students will also need to learn the strenths and weaknesses of sdifferent search engines. Students will visit a website form Monash University on interactive tutorial about search engines and directories. With the knowlege gained by visiting the site students will then list four strategies that will help structure a good search.

List of strategies to use for a good search:

· Always have an objective of what you want to search on the web.
· Use quotation marks to give you the specific result.
· Choose web directories when searching for broad information rather than search engines.
· If you are clear about the topic of your query then use web directories rather than search engines.

Strategies Used in searching for Information:

• Firstly quotation marks gives the specific information one wants and it is very effective in yielding precise information.

Summary of what was learned about information found on the internet and how to search for information:

There is a wide variety of information found on the internet and it is therefore important to know what strategies to use to get the precise information that you want. As mentioned in the tutorial summary knowing the strenthgs of search engines and weaknesses allows for an easy search for information. Moreover, using strategies such as having an objective of what you want to learn, using quotation marks around key words, choosing search engines when searching for broad information rather than web directories and using web directories when clear of your topic are all important strategies to getting important information.