Chapter Six Internet Search Methods and Tools Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For! Introduction Last module completed our study of basic troubleshooting by examining things at the software level. We also finished an elementary look at how we connect to a network and our data packets get to their destination. Now that we can connect to the Internet, our next focus is Internet search methods and tools. Why are the methods and tools that we use to search the Internet important? There are two reasons for their importance. First, with a more effective search procedure you will get better results. You do not want to miss crucial information or facts because of a sloppy search. Secondly, a more efficient search methodology means that you find what you need quicker, leaving you more time for other things. Important Words in this Chapter AND Miscellaneous Spiders Boolean NOT Subject Directory Field OR URL Keyword Quotation Marks Meta-Search Search Engine Internet Search Methods We can break Internet searches into four basic types. What are the four basic types? What are some examples of keyword types that we might use in a keyword search? Why might we want to use quotation marks when making a keyword search? How does a field search limit your results? How can a Boolean logic search be used to expand or narrow our search results? What are the four search methods listed in miscellaneous? When we talk about Internet search methods, we mean the differing approaches to searching that you might take. These can be broken down into four categories which are Keyword, Field, Boolean, and Miscellaneous. The miscellaneous category is a catchall for several approaches to searching that are rarely used. 1. Keyword Searches – A keyword search looks for documents containing one or more words specified by the user. Your keywords may be an idea, phrase, or concept. You want to use unique keywords and synonyms to make your results more accurate. When searching for an exact phrase, place quotation marks around it. Check out the sidebar and examine figure one. 2. Field Searches – A field search limits your search results by requiring a If you were searching using a book title as your specific domain, title, URL, or keyword, then you would want to place the title host to appear in a specific in quotation marks. An example would be field of the results found by “Animal Farm” instead of Animal Farm. If you the search engine. (See Figure don’t place the title in quotation marks, then two, on the next page for a you will get results for pages that have the picture of Google advanced title’s words in other orders. search, where you can search specific domains and URLs.) This is useful for drilling down and focusing on specific content by allowing the user to adjust the breadth and depth of the search. Open your web browser to the Google Figure 1 Example of Using Quotation Marks search engine home page. Enter the following URL (Uniform Resource Locator), Figure 2 Google Advanced Search http://www.google.com/advanced_search , to open the Google Advanced Search page. In the page that opens, scroll down looking at the different specific fields that are available to narrow your search. List three of these on your Study Guide. 3. Boolean Logic Searches – The use of Boolean logic is a way to refine keyword searches. By using the word AND (you can also use the + symbol) AND between two keywords, you tell the search engine that pages in the results OR must have both words. The AND operator narrows our search. We can use NOT the word OR between two keywords to indicate, we are interested in pages that have one or the other of our search terms, or both. This broadens our search. A third useful option is the NOT (can use the – symbol) Boolean operator. When you place the NOT operator in front of a keyword, you are requesting results without that keyword. This is also a way of narrowing your results. Carefully scan the example in the sidebar above. 4. Miscellaneous Searches – In this category, we find several valuable search methods not used frequently. These are as follows: a. Different Language Support – This allows you to search for words in different languages. b. Math Equivalents – This allows you to enter basic math equations or conversions and receive a result. c. Phonebook – This allows you to use a phone number to search for locations or people. d. Spell Checker – If the keyword you entered is misspelled, then spell checker offers suggestions. Internet Search Tools Internet Search Tools is the answer to the question, “How can I quickly and efficiently find what I need of the Internet. What are the two categories into which Internet Search Tools fall? What are the two types of Internet search engines? What do search-engine spiders do? Do individual search engines filter results for truthfulness or validity? In what form do individual search engines return search results? Do search engines keep track of your searches? If there are search engines that do not keep track of your searches, what are they? How is a meta-search engine differ from an individual search engine? Does a meta-search engine use spider programs? What does a meta-search engine do with duplicate search results? Why are Subject Directories more reliable than search engines? The Internet has grown rapidly since it became accessible to the public. No one knows its exact size, but we can confidently say that it is huge. Most people only use a small portion of the Internet. However, the huge size of the Internet leads us to question, “How can I quickly and efficiently find what I need on the Internet?” The various Internet search tools are the answer to this question and that will be the subject of this section. Search tools fall into two basic categories, Search Engines and Subject Directories. 1. Search Engines – Search engines break down into two types, individual search engines and meta-search engines. a. Individual Search Engines – Individual search engines use programs called spiders. Search engine spiders were created in the early 1990s in response to the rapid growth of the Internet and the realization that soon it would be impossible to search all the pages of the Internet for the desired information. Search engine spiders crawl the web, going from page-to-page via the links on each page. Spiders search the web for pages with the words you typed into your search engine. Once they find a page with your search terms, they then examine the links on that page, assuming those links are more trustworthy. Individual search engines return many results. These results are unfiltered for truthfulness or validity. Most Why is the truthfulness or validity of a website important? If a search engines do not filter for website has truthfulness, that means it is telling the truth or adult content. (Some search accurate. Validity has to do with that truth. Is it always true or only engines have a switch to set them for a limited amount of time? to filter out adult-orientated materials.) The results returned by an individual search engine, are in the form of links to websites matching the terms used in your search. Some examples of individual search engines are the following: http://www.bing.com , https://duckduckgo.com , http://www.google.com , http://www.excite.com , and http://www.yahoo.com . Many search engines keep track of your searches to present you with advertisements related to your Figure 3 Number of Searches on DuckDuckGo searches. DuckDuckGo bucks this trend. It advertises itself as the anonymous search engine and does not keep track of your searches. See figure three. After the public was told of NSA (National Security Agency) monitoring of user data at the beginning of June 2013, the number of people using DuckDuckGo has increased greatly. (See figure three.) Search inquiries increased from 1.76 million before the revelations to 4.4 million search inquiries by January 2014. b) Meta-Search Engines – How is a meta-search engine different from an individual search engine? A meta-search engine does not crawl the Internet itself; instead, it sends your request to several individual search engines. It collects the results of the individual search engines, throws out any duplicates, and then gives you a listing of the results. Because it throws out duplicates and only requires you to enter your search terms once, a meta-search engine saves you time over using several individual search engines yourself. Figure 4 Yippy Search Engine Results Some examples of meta-search engines include the following: http://yippy.com/ , http://www.dogpile.com , and http://www.mamma.com . These meta-search engines have various useful features. The Yippy meta-search engine produces results sorted into categories down the left column of the page. (See figure four.) Often you can click on one of these categories and narrow your search results down to exactly what you were searching for. The Dogpile meta-search engine tells you underneath the search bar which individual search engines it is using and in the advanced settings gives you the option of filtering out adult-orientated results. Mama, founded in 1996, is one of the oldest Internet meta-search engines. 2. Subject Directories – Subject Directories are more reliable than search engines. Search engines have a problem with the validity or relevance of their results. Subject directories can help us deal with this problem. They deal with this problem through actual humans instead of a spider program developing and maintaining them.