Understanding Search Engines If you don't know the URL of a web site you can find it by using Search Engines. Search Engines are one of the primary ways that Internet users find web sites. Every day, search engines visit web sites and compile the information for searchers. Those using search engines enter a few keywords, push the "submit" buttons and wait while the search engines find web pages that seem to best match the keywords. Usually, hundreds or thousands of matching web pages are found. In most cases, the 10 most "relevant" matches are displayed first, and users can then choose to see more results if they don't find what they are looking for. Many times what the search engines consider to be relevant may not be what searcher considers relevant. Note: Not all search engines are alike, many find and store information differently. Read below for some of the more popular search engine descriptions. Some search engines search by key words that have been specified by the creator of each web page, and some search by each word that is found within the web site. This makes a big difference in the number of sites you find when you enter in a topic to search for. Common Search Engines Alta Vista The Internet's first "super spider", which claims to be capable of indexing and searching Web pages and Usenet newsgroups up to a 100 times faster than the existing search engines. ANZWERS NEED A COMMENT HERE Excite NetSearch A database of more than 1 million Web pages and the past two weeks of Usenet news / classified advertisements. HotBot The first search engine to exploit multi-machine parallel computing in order to index Web pages and to offer customized search pages to its users. InfoSeek Guide The only service that fully integrates Internet directory browsing and Internet searching. This searches for individual words within a web site. Looksmart Australia NEED A COMMENT HERE Lycos The catalog of the Internet. Used to be the most popular way to search the Web. Magellan Reviews sites, and users can choose to narrow their searches to the "reviewed" database. World-Wide Web Worm Locate almost any Web page or Web information resource (URL), simply by specifying some keywords. Yahoo The oldest major web site directory. Yahoo is well-known, well-used and well-respected. Yahoo is a directory based on user submissions, so it may not have some sites in its catalog that a web crawler might find from searching the web each day. Meta-Search engines These automatically uses multiple popular search engines: Dogpile searches AltaVista, Excite Search, Excite Subj. Guide, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, Lycos' a2z, Magellan, WWW Worm, WWW Yellow Pages, WebCrawler, What-U-Seek, Yahoo! Inference Find searches AltaVista, Excite Search, Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo! MetaCrawler searches AltaVista, Excite Search, Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo! Metafind searches AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, OpenText, Webcrawler From Ameritech

How to Search Each site has a description. The search looks at the words in the description.To search the description, type your topic into the box labeled: Please type your topic here. What is a topic You can search for: A word For example, type dinosaur to find sites that are described with the word dinosaur. A phrase (words that are next to each other) For example, type dinosaur bones to find sites that are described with the phrase dinosaur bones. Words that start the same For example, type key* to find key, keys, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on. All forms of a word For example, type sink** to find sink, sinking, sank, sunk. One word or another word For example, type dinosaur OR Jurassic to find sites about dinosaurs and also find sites about the Jurassic period. (The sites about the Jurassic period may or may not include dinosaurs. The sites about dinosaurs may or may not include anything about the Jurassic period.) This also works with phrases. For example, type dinosaur eggs OR dinosaur bones to find sites about dinosaur eggs and also find sites about dinosaur bones. The sites about dinosaur eggs may not include anything about dinosaur bones. More than one word For example, type dinosaur AND Jurassic to find sites about dinosaurs in the Jurassic period. (The sites must include both dinosaursand the Jurassic period.) This also works with phrases. For example, type dinosaur AND Jurassic Park to find sites that include both dinosaurs and the movie, Jurassic Park. One word but not another word For example, type dino* AND NOT Flintstones to find sites about dinosaurs but not about the dinosaur character in the Flintstones television show. Exact phrases, such as phrases that include and, or, a, an, as, the and other common words For example, type "peanut butter and jelly" (use the quotation marks) to find exactly peanut butter and jelly. Words near each other For example, type dinosaur NEAR bones to find sites that include both dinosaur and bones, where the words are close together. The words must be no more than 50 words apart. Combinations For example, type ("peanut butter and jelly" OR "bologna and cheese") AND sandwich to find sites about these types of sandwiches. Use the parentheses ( ) around the part of the topic that you want checked first.

Fine tuning AltaVista searches

Have a look at an article by Bob Rankin for some tips about fine tuning Altavista searches.

Search Tools for Kids

Internet Search for kids Lists suitable site in Levels and has general interest sites and homework helpers. Kids Search Engines From Search Engine Watch Kids Search Tools Lists a number of sites including screened sites SafeKids Search Lists search engines and directories for kids Search Tools for Students Lists search engines. Also has catagories for science, history, images, encyclopedias, dictionaries, bibliographies and maps

Links

Internet Detective It is strongly recommended that you begin a study of "searching" with this tutorial. It is an interactive tutorial teaching how to evaluate the quality of information on the Internet. Free registration is required. The tutorial takes one to two hours but it can be done at more than one sitting. Produced by the DESIRE project with funding from the European Union. Safe Surfing from Education World Search the Internet: A Graduated Approach in 4 Steps from UC Berkeley Library Explains different ways to enter search terms in a number of search engines and subject directories. Highly recommneded site. Searching the Web Is as Easy as ABC from Eudcation World Searching the World Wide Web Lessons in using search engines from Oregon Content Standards and Technology Searching With Savvy: The Best Search Engines for Teachers and Students An article in Education World by Cara Bafile which briefly outlines the characteristics of a number of well known searh engines and meta search sites Web Searching Tips From Search Engine Watch

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