Who Uses the Internet? What is the Internet? When should you use the Internet in your curriculum? Where can you find relevant information? How can you access information more efficiently?
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How can you access information more efficiently?

Web Search Engines

Like the varied television networks which send out programming content to viewers, not all search engines are alike!

How They Work

Search Engines...

  • build "Catalogs" also known as "Databases" or "Indexes" to find information 
  • can only find the web pages in their own catalog
  • no catalog covers the entire Internet

Three techniques to build catalogs:

  • active - collects information by itself using a program called a spider or robot that travels around the net, locates pages and adds them to the catalog.
  • passive - allow people to register their pages in directories.(Can become outdated).
  • meta-search - forwards queries to other search engines. 

Types of Queries...

  • simple queries - don't require much thinking, but often yield too many hits. In general, search for singular, not plural word forms. Use the Help, Options or Search Tips of a search engine's main web page if you use simple queries.

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  • advanced queries - use operators to narrow your search to more specific hits. The types of operators supported by a search engine make up its query language and may be different depending on the search engine you use.
Go to one of the search engine sites below. Enter keywords related to topics of interest to you. See what related sites exist. 
 
Alta Vista
Webcrawler
Yahoo!
Excite
InfoSeek
A 2 Z
Lycos
Hotbot
Magellan

Search Strategies

  • General- uses operator OR to link several key words together, when you know very little about your topic.  
  • Specific - uses operator AND to join keywords together, when you know alot about your topic. The more keywords you add, the narrower your search, with less hits.  
  • You can combine General and Specific searches but be aware of how you group your key words.

  • Incremental - Common sense strategy to change your query if it doesn't produce the results you want. Note that some search engines make this more convenient than others. Watch for features that contain: 
    • No retyping. 
    • No backtracking. 
  • Substring search - allows you to look for partial words, called substrings to get around having to type all forms of a word. (For example, instead of typing the query: tax OR taxes OR taxation; the keyword tax would match these). The advanced query options of a search engine may allow substring searching to be turned on and off. 

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  • Search-and-jump - utilizes the Find feature 

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  • Category search - in theory, are intuitive and convenient; yet you are at the mercy of the designer who created the categories. (Example: Yahoo)

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  • Search-and-rank - depends on the search engine. Select one that fits your needs.
  • Tips to speed up your search time:

    • turn off image loading 
    • use a text-based browser 
    • make a homepage on your hard drive 
    • use the Back button 
    • use the Stop button 
    • upgrade your hardware: faster modem, more RAM, hard drive, processor

Foot Map.

Established: May 1995 Last Modified: April 17, 1998 
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© 1998 Seawell Elementary School