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There are many search engines out on the Internet today. These sites have many different categories, and can be used differently for different kinds or types of searches. Some search engines are great for some types of searches, while they are not for others, while other search engines may be much better at one type of a search than another. Which search engine a user uses is completely a personal preference.
One of the determining factors in how successful a search is how you enter your search into the engine. How you interpret the text that you type into the search engine may actually be interpreted differently by the search engine. While a lot of mistakes may not happen when you type just one word, things can get a little hairy when you start using multiple search terms.
Probably the main reason a search engine does do perform a search correctly is that the relationship of the words that you type as the search text into the search engine is misunderstood by the user. In this, if a user types the phrase "Computer Ethics" into a search engine, the search engine could look for documents that either had "Computer" or "Ethics" as a key word, but not both. What the search engine did was perform an OR search, where the document is a hit if if contains the first word, the second word, or both (or more words). In addition, another to change the results of a search is to use capital letters (ie. Technology Ethics instead of technology ethics), which can narrow your search results. While this example is not the case with every search engine, a misunderstanding of how a search engine can drastically affect how your search results will look.
Some basic symbols to be used are +, -, and "". "+" means that the word following the "+" must be present in the search's hits. Placing text between the quotation marks ("Computer Ethics") makes the search engine treat the words as a phrase, and, thus, both words will (depending on the search engine) show up as a phrase in the search hits. Using a "-" is just the opposite of a "+." The word following the "-" will not be present in the search's hits.
Often engines will let you use AND, OR, and NOT. Using these can be just as effective as using the other symbols. However, they can also cause the engine to act differently. For example, in Excite, using the AND operator turns off "concept searching." This means that the engine searches for the specific words that you typed in, and not variations (ie. Jog turning up a hit on Jogging, Jogged, Jogs.) Besides this, some search engines may think that one of your keywords is AND or OR, so be careful with where you use these terms.
One final note is to avoid common words such as "the", "but", and "a." These words are commonly unnecessary, and can potentially mess up search results.
For more specific information, search engines usually include a help section on how to correctly use their engine. Every engine is different, and what may work on one engine may not on another.
Besides conducting searches, try browsing through the different categories, and see if your search topic might be included in one. This way, you can avoid sifting through a bunch of irrelevant results, when a concise listing of what you want is available. However, not all sites that are registered with a search engine are listed in its categories.
Altavista--Good for multimedia searches.
Ask Jeeves--Best when you are beginning research on a large topic. It's good a locating a few good sites, but it is not the way to go if you are looking for something real specific.
Excite--Simple and efficient search engine. Very solid and straightforward.
Go--Best at broad searches, where ratings and category choices will help lead to good sites. It is prone to search glitches, though.
Google--A great search engine that is easy to use and has plenty of options.
HotBot--Powerful, easy to use menus, clean interface, and effective search routines. It does have some limitations.
Lycos--A less powerful option than HotBot, but useful if "popular" choice pop up.
Northern Light--Best for older students and adults in doing comprehensive research.
Yahoo!--A good all-around tool.
Google--Another good search engine.
These search tools are great for when you are looking for sites that are geared towards younger audiences.
Created on
March 18th, 2001.
Please direct questions and comments to: Webmaster.
