How to Find What You Want on the Web
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PEOPLE and technology How to Find What You Want on the Web Searching for something on the Web? Here’s how to find it quickly and easily. BY MIKE ROUFA n a previous issue, we helped you of the following endings: however, gathers and presents informa- find the right Internet service .com = a commercial Web site tion differently. If you take the time to provider, or ISP, to host your Web .net = usually an Internet service provider understand these differences you can use site (see Roufa and Hoffman in .org = a nonprofit organization them to your advantage when you’re “References”). In this issue we .edu = an educational institution searching (and, consequently, marketing I focus on search engines—Web your site on) the Web. For example, if you want informa- sites that offer you the best chance to tion on a program of the Soros find information and to market your site Active Search Engines Foundation, you can type www.soros.org to an international audience. An active search engine is really just into your browser. This will take you to Using search engines to find what a “robot,” a type of software program the home page of the Soros Foundation, you want and to market your site is a which continually scours the Web for where you’ll find the organization’s list of complex topic. In this article we’ll new pages to add to its database. It does explain how search engines work and programs. this all day and all night, often by starting offer tips on using them for your Unfortunately, this strategy will get with one Web page and then cataloging research. In an upcoming issue, we’ll dis- you only so far. For one thing, not all all of that page’s links. You may see com- cuss how to promote your site on the Web addresses are so easy to figure out. puter magazines refer to active search Web using these same resources. If you’re looking for the New York State engines as “spiders” or “crawlers” The Web’s greatest asset, unfortu- Department of Environmental because of the way the software travels nately, also can be its biggest drawback. Conservation, you may not guess through the links of the Web. The most By providing an incredibly cost-effective www.dec.state.ny.us in your first hun- popular active search engines include: way for individuals and small groups to dred tries. Furthermore, you may be Alta Vista (www.altavista.digital.com), present themselves, their viewpoints, and looking for information on a concept as HotBot (www.hotbot.com), and Excite their products, the Web has the potential opposed to an organization. Here, (www.excite.com). (See page 13 for a to become an unwieldy information www.socialservicesinnewyorkcity.org is comprehensive list of search engines.) wasteland. With this many choices, find- unlikely to offer much help. How do active search engines work? ing the page you want can be like picking Strategy 2: You present a request to an active search out a needle in a giant stack of needles. engine by typing a couple of keywords, or Let’s take a look at some strategies to Use Search Engines. an exact phrase, into a form on the help you find what you’re looking for. The best way to find information on search engine’s Web site. This process is Strategy 1: the Web is to use search engines—Web known as “submitting a query” or just sites that create an index of information “querying.” Try Guessing. available on the Web. All search engines When you submit a query, the engine If you’re looking for a specific orga- are essentially the same. At their core searches its database and ranks all the nization’s Web site, you may be able to they are huge databases that contain matches it finds. Say, for example, you’re guess the Web site’s name by combining names, addresses, descriptions, and key- searching for “sustainable development.” “www,” the organization’s name, and one words of Web pages. Each search engine, Pages that contain both “sustainable” and Nonprofit World, Vol. 17, No. 1 12 “development” appear before those that they cast a wide net. If you’re not sure Yahoo! also lets you query its database contain just one of the words. Pages with what you’re looking for, or you want to for keywords or plain text, similar to an both words next to each other are ranked find out everything on the Web related to active search engine. even higher. Pages that contain the a topic, you might do well to start with an In an effort to compete with Yahoo!, phrase several times in the document are active search engine. That way you’ll be some active search engines such as Lycos ranked highest. sure to find a wide range of possible (www.lycos.com), WebCrawler (www. The search engine then gives you a returns on your query. On the other hand, webcrawler.com), and Infoseek (www. list of the first 10 or 25 matches. It also because active search engines tend to infoseek.com) have added Web directo- provides a link you can click to see the have larger databases, chances are that ries to their main query pages. You can next set of matches for your query. an active search engine will provide an browse through these links or search the This ranking process is very helpful. overwhelming number of hits for your entire Web all from one site. Snap! For example, an Alta Vista query for “sus- query when you’re looking for something (www.snap.com) and LookSmart (www. specific. tainable development” returns an looksmart.com) also combine these fea- astounding 26,327,685 pages, but the ones Directories tures and let you search their own direc- that are most relevant appear at the top A directory, or passive search tories and the entire Web simultaneously. In short, directories tend to be small- of the list. Even if it had returned only engine, is a database of links put together er in scope but more focused in the infor- 200 or so, which is an incredibly small by people instead of robots or software. mation that they contain. If you know number of pages, you still don’t want to Thus, passive directories tend to be well what you want on the Web, use a directo- have to check every page one at a time to organized and highly functional, despite ry first. see if it really fits your needs. the fact that they’re smaller than their Active search engines offer benefits active counterparts. Meta Search Engines and disadvantages. On the positive side, The undisputed king of Web directo- A meta search engine isn’t really a ries is Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com). In busi- search engine at all in that it doesn’t con- ness since the early days of the Web, A Comprehensive List tain its own databases. Instead, it takes Yahoo! remains one of the best organized your query, then submits it to several of Search Engines sites. Its database is organized hierarchi- other search engines. The other engines Active cally, starting with the following head- process the query and return lists of sites Alta Vista - www.altavista.digital.com ings: to the meta engine. The meta engine then HotBot - www.hotbot.com Arts & Humanities ranks these sites according to how many Excite - www.excite.com Business & Economy search engines return the same site, and GoTo - www.goto.com Computers & Internet presents the links to you. These engines can be powerful, but Passive Education getting good results can be tricky. With Yahoo! - www.yahoo.com Entertainment Government an active search engine, you can write Active and Passive Health specific queries to find exactly what you Lycos - www.lycos.com News & Media want, but with a meta search engine you WebCrawler - www.webcrawler.com Recreation & Sports have to rely on how well the meta engine Infoseek - www.infoseek.com Reference converts your query into the languages of Snap! - www.snap.com Science the other engines. This makes them less LookSmart - www.looksmart.com Social Science desirable for very specific queries, but Meta Society & Culture well suited for finding general informa- Metacrawler - You can browse through these head- tion. The most well known meta search www.metacrawler.com ings to find the sites you want. Browsing engines are Metacrawler (www.meta- Ask Jeeves - www.askjeeves.com through similar sites is an excellent way crawler.com), Dogpile (www.dogpile. Dogpile - www.dogpile.com to do research, especially if your topic is com), and Inference Find (www.infind. Inference Find - www.infind.com fairly broad. com). This is how I found the N.Y. State All-in-one Department of Environmental Conser- Refine Your Netscape Netcenter - vation, in four clicks: Searching Strategy. www.netscape.com All-in-one - www.albany.net/allinone Government to U.S. Government Now that you know the difference to State Governments to New York between types of search engines, you’re January • February 1999 13 well on your way to choosing the search its link page. Almost every Web site has a ments to disappear, however. Remember, engine that best meets your needs. Here page of links to similar sites. If you can’t you use search engines for free, and ads are some hints to help in your search: find exactly what you want, go to a site are a search engine’s major source of rev- that looks pretty close, then see if that enue.) You can bookmark these low- Read the Tips.