INTRODUCTION

 Information is not stored in an organised way on the Web.  Instead the web is a chaotic, anarchic mess of information.  What's more, some of it is of very high quality, and some of it is rubbish or just plain wrong.

 But before make any judgements about material we find on the Web, we've got to find it first. 

 So how do you find useful sites?

 There are a number of possible techniques:

 1.       Go to sites whose addresses you know, eg

·         Use any address you have noted down from an article or book you've read, or had passed on to you by friends, etc

·         Links pages  (for example link pages of educational institutions

·         Portals (a type of links page really) a doorway into related material, eg http://www.english-zone.com/  (ESL activities) or http://www.isabelperez.com  

 2.       Find completely new sites by searching

In order to carry out a search, you need to use a search engine. 

 WHAT IS A SEARCH ENGINE?

 Simply a piece of software that hunts through its database for the information you type in.  The trick is to know what to type in and also which search engine to use as they are not all the same.

HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?

 There are two main types:

1.       Those whose database is created by a robot - this uses a spider or crawler to index Web pages.  A major advantage of this sort of search engine is that it can search more of the Web, but even the best (Google?) can only search about 18% of the Web!!   There is a "deep Web" (hidden Web) which includes things like documents stored in library sites or on university websites, which the robot cannot index.

2.       Those whose database is created by humans.  This type of search engine is also called a directory.  Yahoo is a good example.  Humans sort the pages into categories.  Humans are slower than robots but the quality of their work should be higher (or more human-friendly!).

Note 

Search engines don't search all the pages on the web.  Some just look at the index page of each website, some look at the titles of Web pages, some accept money to return a company's website near the top of a search, but don't necessarily tell you they're doing that!  For comparisons of how different search engines work have a look at:

http://www.searchenginewatch.com

http://www.searchengineworld.com

http://www.searchengineguide.com

SPECIAL FEATURES OF SOME MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES

Ask Jeeves http://www.aj.com

Allows you to type in natural language questions, though unfortunately it doesn't always understand what you write!  Ask Jeeves is good if  you want the answer to a common sort of question, such as "what is the tallest building in the world?"

Altavista http://www.altavista.com

·         Allows natural language questions

·         Can search for images

·         Can search in a specific language (but you can also use a Czech search engine like www.webfast.cz

Google http://www.google.com

·         Can search for images

·         It also has a directory

·         Very fast

·         My favorite

Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com is a directory

+++

Whichever search engine you use, and there are lots, you should choose one you feel comfortable with and learn as much as you can about how to use it.  Look at the Help files!

SYNTAX OR WHAT SHOULD I TYPE IN FOR THE BEST SEARCH?

All browsers require slightly different syntax.  (By syntax we mean the way you write words and symbols in the search box).  But here are some general techniques which you can try out with different browsers:

·         Don't use capital letters in searches.  Some Search engines ignore them (eg Google), others, will only give partial results, eg Paris gives Paris, but paris gives paris, Paris and PARIS

·         Inverted commas for phrases eg "Jack London" or "different from" (though note that Google automatically searches for pages which include all the words in your search)

·         + (or AND) eg norwich +hotel

·         - (or NOT)  eg hotel +paris -"bed and breakfast"

·         / (or OR) eg football OR soccer

·         NEAR eg JFK NEAR assassination

·         Some search engines (not Google) allow stemming or wild card searches eg ski* for skis, skiing , skier

·         Using site:www.bbc.co.uk will only search for the text on the BBC's site.  Using site:.es will only search Spanish based sites.  (Tip: note the full stop after the colon)

·         Using intitle:brabbs will look for a site with brabbs in the page title.

·         Using filetype:doc (pdf, gif, jpg, etc) will look for files which only have these extensions.

·         Using domain:gov will look for a site whose domain name ends in gov

·         Using url:golf will look for a site whose address (URL) contains the word golf.

·         Nesting.  Eg a search for (phil OR philip) brabbs is the same as a search for "Phil Brabbs" OR "Philip Brabbs"

Search Engines

  http://www.google.com/  Google

  http://www.altavista.com/  Altavista

  http://www.alltheweb.com/  All the Web

  http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech001.shtml

   and http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech002.shtml  Search engines explained for teachers and students.

Tips on using search engines

20.  http://webquest.sdsu.edu/searching/fournets.htm   An excellent guide in simple English on how to improve your searching of the Web using a search engine.

21.  http://www.searchenginewatch.com/facts/boolean.html  Help with boolean operators (and/not/or etc) for searching.