How to Use Search Engines
Searching is used when you don't know the exact address of a particular
site, or if you need information on a particular subject for your essay,
term paper, or research paper assignment. To search for information on
the Internet you can use either a search engine
or
a subject
directory.
A search engine is a tool that helps you locate information
on the Internet. A search engine's database is created by software programs
known as robots or spiders. These software programs scan the Web and
collect information on websites. When you enter a keyword or phrase into
a search engine, the computer will return a list of sites or "hits" related
to the keywords entered. In general, search engine databases tend to
be comprehensive in scope and may include thousands or even millions
of websites. Alta Vista is a large, popular search engine.
[Chart] [Popular]
[Meta] [Multiple] [Other]
Special Thanks to Walt Howe
and Hope N. Tillman for permission to use their chart. |
ENGINE |
Pages
Indexed |
Search
Types |
Search
Refine |
Search
Limits |
Search
Extras |
AltaVista |
140M |
+/-
form
Boolean
plain lang |
by topic |
fields
language
date |
translation
wild cards
proximity |
Infoseek |
30M |
+/-
form |
limit to
reviewed
sites |
categories
fields |
|
Northern
Light |
96M |
+/-
form
Boolean |
by folders |
language
fields
date |
sp collection
wild cards |
Lycos |
30M |
+/-
form
Boolean |
similar
pages |
fields
categories
language |
proximity |
HotBot |
110M |
+/-
form
Boolean |
|
fields
date
by language |
wild cards |
Excite |
50M |
+/-
form
Boolean |
more like
this |
categories |
thesaurus |
MultiCrawl |
100M+ |
simple AND |
|
|
Will search all of the above. |
Google |
25M
(will
grow) |
simple AND
(use + to
force
stopwords) |
|
|
next
generation
relevance |
© 1998 Walt
Howe and Hope N. Tillman
(last revised November 3, 1998) - Copied with permission
. |
1.
Search Types.
- +/- refers to the sytem where
+ marks "must have" terms, and - marks "must
not have" terms.
- Form refers to a structured
form with pull down entries to categorize and limit a search
- Boolean refers to full Boolean
AND, OR, NOT and parentheses or symbolic equivalents. If you
are not familiar with Boolean searching, see our Guide
to Boolean Searching.
- Plain Lang is short for plain
language queries in sentence form.
2. Search Refine. Refers to
methods used to improve a search after initial results are returned.
3. Search Limits.
- Fields refers to the ability
to restrict searches to particular URLs, domains, linking
sites, countries, or categories like graphics and audio files.
- Language refers to the ability
to limit search results by language.
- Categories refers to the
ability to limit searches to a particular category from a
listed set of categories. This often limits the search to
only those pages that have been reviewed and categorized,
not the complete set.
4. Search Extras
- Wild cards refers to the
ability to add a * to a word stem to allow different word
endings or a ? to represent a missing letter.
- Proximity refers to the ability
to search for adjacent terms or terms within a certain range
of words. Nearly every search engine allows denoting consecutive
words in phrases by using double quote marks around them.
|
POPULAR SEARCH SITES
- MultiCrawl
- A one stop shop to search all the major browsers including webcrawler,
AltaVista and many others in one fair swoop.
-
AltaVista
- Claims to search over 100 million web pages and the full-text of over
13,000 news groups. Browse by subject, or limit your search to a specific
language. Can also request system to translate web pages from English
to French, German to English, etc.
-
Excite
- PC Magazine calls this 'the best general purpose Web search site'
(December 1996). It delivers a high percentage of relevant hits and
users are able to find 'More like this'.
-
Hot Bot
- A full text search of over 36 million Web documents. Fast and easy
to use. Updated weekly.
-
InfoSeek
- Searches the Web, Usenet Newsgroups, Company Directory, e-mail addresses,
news stories within the past month, and Web FAQs.
-
Lycos
- The Catalog of the Internet.
-
Northern Light Search
- A search service that not only gives you the 25 strongest hits for
your search terms, but it also clusters the rest into "Custom Search
Folders". These are divided under subject, type, source, and language.
Northern Light also lets you search through their "special collection"
of over 1 million articles from journals, books, databases, etc, which
are not generally available anywhere else on the Web. There is a cost
involved in retrieving these articles.
-
WebCrawler
- A fast search by document title and CONTENT.
-
Yahoo!
- A good search service, and excellent subject guide to the Internet.
[Chart] [Popular]
[Meta] [Multiple] [Other]
META SEARCH SITES
-
Dogpile
- A great multi-engine search site. Searches the Web plus Usenet and
FTP sites. Extremely fast.
-
Metacrawler
- A great system! Searches nine different services i.e. Open Text, Lycos,
Webcrawler, Infoseek, Excite, Inktomi, Alta Vista, Yahoo, and Galaxy,
and organizes the results into a uniform format for display. Fast and
easy to use.
[Chart] [Popular]
[Meta] [Multiple] [Other]
MULTIPLE SEARCH SERVICES
-
Beaucoup Search Engines
- Beaucoup has more than 1,000 listings of engines, directories and
indices across the world.
-
The Complete Search Engine Index
- An alphabetical index of over 70 different search engines.
-
Internet Search Tools (Library of Congress)
- Search Tools are divided into such categories as Multiple Resource
Types, World Wide Web by Subject, World Wide Web by Geographic Location,
Directories of E-mail Addresses, FTP Sites and Archives, etc.
- Search.com
- Provides more than 100 ways to search the Web using specialty searches.
[Chart] [Popular]
[Meta] [Multiple] [Other]
OTHER SEARCH SERVICES
-
Deja News - The Source for Internet News Groups
- The "largest collection of indexed archived Usenet News available
anywhere."
-
Delphi FAQ: How to subscribe, unsubscribe, and search e-mail discussion
lists.
- Answers questions about what lists are available, the commands needed
for the various types of lists, and how to search their archives.