Searching the Web

QUICK STEPS

EFFECTIVE SEARCH TECHNIQUES

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction	How to Search on the Web
What is a Search Engine.	Why only two search engines in the course?
Where do I find AltaVista and Yahoo?	Which to use and when?
Searching with AltaVista (Keywords)	Simple Search
To narrow down your search	Search Examples
Web Keywords	Searching with Yahoo! (by Topic)

Introduction

One of the great features of the World Wide Web is the vast amount of information that is there for the taking. Unfortunately, finding what you are looking for is not as easy as walking into the public library. There are literally millions of pages of information on the Internet, but it is scattered across tens of thousands of computers all across the globe.

The Web is a great place to find sources of specific and detailed information about topics of interest. Whatever you wish to find, no matter how bizarre or mundane, you can be almost guaranteed to find it on the Web. Just try a search for “big toe” if you don’t believe me.

The amazing amount of information available on the Web might seem overwhelming if you’re looking for one specific topic or keyword. Web search tools or “search engines” help in this situation.

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How to Search on the Web

There are different ways to approach searches on the Web:

	Surfing - hopping from hyperlink to hyperlink
	Subject/Topic search - broad topics
	Keyword oriented search - specific topics

As you may have already discovered, surfing the web can be a lot of fun but it is easy to get lost or distracted and it really is a bit “hit or miss”. Therefore if you are looking for a particular topic or keyword it is best to use one of the tools provided on the web itself - the search engines.

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What is a Search Engine

A search engine is a tool to help you find information on the Internet. Search engines continuously scour the contents of the World Wide Web to add to their massive indexes of web pages. Some index only the titles or headers of documents, others index the entire text of each document and still others search other indexes or directories.

A search engine is simply a World Wide Web site that enables the user to search for information through the use of keywords and/or phrases. The search is not a ‘live’ search of the Internet but a search of an index or database of web sites and their contents which has been collected by the company which operates the search engine.

Most of the companies who provide the search engine sites are commercial organisations and some are even publicly listed companies on the US stock exchange. They make their profits, not from users, but from selling advertising space on their site.

When you consider that one of the largest search engines can expect around 14 million visitors in a single day, this is very lucrative advertising space indeed.

Search engines gather information about the Internet in a number of ways. Most use automated programs variously known as web crawlers, spiders and robots to scour the web continuously and keep their databases up to date. Some databases are far more extensive than others and index every significant word on each page of a World Wide Web site. Others may only index a brief description.

There are several hundred search engines on the World Wide Web. However many of them are quite small and very limited in terms of general usefulness. Of all the search engines there are about a dozen of any real significance for the serious user and most information needs can be met by using just two.

The two search engines featured in this course are AltaVista and Yahoo!


www.altavista.yellowpages.com.au	www.yahoo.com

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Why only two search engines?

The choice of AltaVista and Yahoo! for this course is not an arbitrary one but based on research indicating that they are perhaps the best combination to meet the needs of most users. AltaVista is reputed to have the largest database of information on the World Wide Web and is ideal for keyword searches. Yahoo! is different to most other search engines (strictly speaking it is really a searchable index not a search engine) in that its information is organised hierarchically like a knowledge tree and is excellent for topic based searches.

This is not to say you should never use one of the other search engines. Many of them use the same search commands (syntax) as you will learn here and some have features that you may find useful. Using the knowledge gained here you should be able to use any of the other search engines should you have the need.

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Where do I find AltaVista and Yahoo?

As indicated above, the search engines are simply World Wide Web sites that allow you to search for information. Therefore, once you know the web address (URL) you can navigate to them and add them to your favorites or bookmark them (depending on the browser you are using).

There are two AltaVista sites, one in the US and, what is called, a mirror site here in Australia. A mirror site, as the name suggests, is a mirror of the parent site. That is, all the information contained on the parent AltaVista site in the US is ‘mirrored’ on a site in Australia. The parent site frequently handles several million search requests each day and the creation of a mirror helps alleviate congestion and enable faster searching than might otherwise be the case.

This course will use the Australian mirror site. However you should be aware the parent site has some features not yet available on the Australasian mirror.

The web addresses for AltaVista and Yahoo! are:

www.altavista.yellowpages.com.au

www.yahoo.com.au

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Which to use and when?

AltaVista maintains a database of every significant word on each of the web sites it catalogues. This makes it ideal for keyword based searches. These are searches where you know the word/s you are looking for.

On the other hand, Yahoo! maintains a hierarchical listing organised by categories. The listing is much like a tree of knowledge, where each category may have sub-categories enabling you to burrow down through the various levels until you reach the information you seek. This makes it useful for searching for a topic when you may not be sure of the keyword you want.

For example, if you want to find a World Wide Web site that tells you how to use E-mail an AltaVista search for that keyword currently results in 5 million hits. The word E-mail is obviously too generalised and you may not be aware of any associated terms to help narrow down your search. By using Yahoo! you are able to quickly get to the information you seek by selecting appropriate categories and sub-categories. Such a search would take you through:

Computers and the Internet à Internet à Information & Documentation à Beginner’s Guides

Where you would find Beginner’s Guide to Effective E-mail and other relevant web sites.

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Searching with AltaVista (Keywords)

Simple Search

The cream coloured box in the centre of the AltaVista page is the heart of the search process.

Type a word or phrase or a question (for example, weather Perth or what is the weather in Perth?), then click Search (or press the Enter key).

Pretty simple, isn't it? Because AltaVista accurately interprets natural language questions, you don't even need to think about your query--just ask. By the way, don't worry about getting a large number--even millions--of results, because the matches at the top of the list are likely to be the most useful to you. Simple Search automatically ranks results so that the most likely ones appear first.

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To narrow down your search…

	Use only lower case unless you want your search to be case sensitive. If you search for Coffee, you'll get only sites that include that word with just that capitalisation. If you search for coffee, you'll get any page with that word.
	Use quotation marks to search for a phrase. For fairy tales, search for "once upon a time". Without quotes, you'll just get any pages that use any of those (very common, by the way) words.
	Use as many words as you want to focus the search. The more information you provide, the more useful the initial results will be. For example, a search for sandals leather footwear is more likely to produce useful results than a search for sandals alone. Assuming you want information about leather sandals, that is.
	Use a plus sign (+) in front of a word to require that word to appear in the results. To search for information about a particular Broadway musical, try +Broadway Cats. Or, require entire phrases like this: +"one small step".
	Use a minus sign (-) in front of a word to exclude it from results. To search for information about cats, but not the musical, try cats -musical. Exclude phrases in the same way: dogs -"going to the".
	Use an *asterisk ()** to broaden your search. To find any words that start with gold, use gold* to find matches for gold, goldfinch, goldfinger, and golden.

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Search Examples

Here are some Simple Search examples you might find helpful:

apple pear muffin recipe

Searches for a muffin recipe that includes apples or pears, but ideally would contain both fruits. If any document contains all four words, AltaVista places it at the top of the results list. Documents containing only some of the words would be next and documents containing only one of the words would appear last.

bicycle "for sale"

Requests documents that contain either the phrase for sale or the word bicycle. Documents containing both would appear first in the results list. The quotes surrounding for sale require that the words appear together in the specified order.

quilt*

The asterisk (*) wildcard notation indicates that the user is interested in documents containing the words quilts, quilter, quilting, or quilted.

+noir +film -"pinot noir"

Indicates that documents must contain both the words noir and film, but cannot contain the phrase pinot noir.

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Web Keywords

Both Simple and Advanced Search support keywords (or structural elements), which identify particular parts of Web pages or newsgroup postings and restrict your search to pages that meet specific criteria.

For example, you can search for terms that appear specifically in a document's title, URL, links, text, and so on. And, you can search for pages on a specified host computer (like altavista.digital.com) or find all pages that include links to your Web site. Likewise, in Usenet, you can search for the terms that appear in message subject lines, words within a posting, or even search for the name of people who posted messages.

To search using keywords, simply enter the keyword (they're listed in the following table) plus the specific item you're looking for. For example, if you want to search documents containing the word King in the document title, you'd enter title:King , which includes both the keyword (title:) and the word you're looking for (King). Keyword searches require the keyword in lowercase, followed by a colon, then a word or a phrase (no spaces in between the elements).

All the other rules in AltaVista apply to keywords as well. For example, use double quotes to indicate a phrase following a keyword, like title:"The King". Or, use the asterisk (*) wildcard to match a portion of a word, like title:Presl*.

The following list specifies keywords to use for Web searches.

anchor:text

Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the text of a hyperlink. anchor:"Click here to visit AltaVista" would find pages with "Click here to visit AltaVista" as a link.

applet:class

Finds pages that contain a specified Java applet. Use applet:morph to find pages using applets called morph.

domain:domainname

Finds pages within the specified domain. This is particularly useful for limiting your search to a specific country. Use domain:de to find pages from Germany, or use domain:edu to find pages from educational organizations.

host:name

Finds pages on a specific computer. The search host:altavista.digital.com would find pages on the AltaVista computer, and host:netfx.com.au would find pages on the computer called netfx.

image:filename

Finds pages with images having a specific filename. Use image:elvis to find pages with images called elvis.

link:URLtext

Finds pages with a link to a page with the specified URL text. Use link:altavista.digital.com to find all pages linking to AltaVista.

text:text

Finds pages that contain the specified text in any part of the page other than an image tag, link, or URL. The search text:cow9 would find all pages with the term cow9 in them.

title:text

Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the page title (which appears in the title bar of most browsers). The search title:Elvis would find pages with Elvis in the title.

url:text

Finds pages with a specific word or phrase in the URL. Use url:altavista to find all pages on all servers that have the word altavista in the host name, path, or filename--the complete URL, in other words.

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Searching with Yahoo! (by Topic)

Yahoo is one of the best “hierarchical” search databases, particularly useful when you want to find “all there is to know” about a certain topic or aren’t sure of the keyword/s to use.

Although you can search Yahoo by keyword, one of its main strengths is its catalogue of topics.

Look for the list of categories and click on the Internet category. This will provide you with another text box to search for a keyword and, if you scroll down a little you will see a long list of categories all related to the Internet. Click on a few topics to learn everything you ever wanted to know about the Internet - but didn’t know where to look.

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