Week 9, Using Search Engines

Lecture
This week's lecture was on search engines. We were told about some common problems, interfaces, common search engines, types of queries and search tips.

Some of the types of problems you might come across are that your search engine might find too many results and you can't go through them all. This means you will need to refine your search to a key phrase about your topic. Broken links are also a big problem with web pages that are not being updated regularly. Some common search engines are Google, Ask Jeeves, msn search and Yahoo. There are four main queries: keywords, phrase, Boolean and advanced/engine features.

Tutorial
*Keywords and phrase
*Guess a location
*Use several search tools
*Back up to find out where you are

In our tutorial we had to do a quiz and find out the answers using search engines if we didn't already know them. When I was looking for Lady of Shalott's author I went to Yahoo and my keywords were Lady of Shalott and it came up with many results. I didn't need to click on a search because the author appeared under some searches. I have found that sometimes you really need to find a good keyword or you might never find what you are looking for. A good thing about some search engines is if you are searching for something and you spell it wrong it will ask you if you meant something else.




Readings
Our reading Internet Search Tips and Strategies is getting us ready to find a range of information on the World Wide Web (WWW). It explains what different search engines are and which ones we could use for certain research. We get a brief description on each; keyword search, phase search and Boolean Operations. Lastly the reading goes through search tips to help you narrow down the information on your specific subject.

The Spider Apprentice explains useful information on search engines. We are shown how to improve our search engine skills by finding keywords and showing us how to find relevant information. It's useful to know if you are looking at the right site for your topic. Is it more useful to search about your topic in a search engine or a web directory? You will also find information on web directories so you can use them instead of search engines.

Search Engine Tutorials is a web site for you to extend your search engine knowledge. It has articles on search engines dating from 2004 back to the 1990's. It is a good source to help you expand your search engine knowledge.