Searching the Web
Have you ever searched for information on the Web and received a list of 245,187 Web pages to explore? How can you find the information you are searching for? How can you limit your search to the relevant information? Which of the many search tools or search engines should you use?
There are millions of pages of information on the World Wide Web, and finding relevant information can be a real challenge. Fortunately, there are search tools that index the Web and provide a way to quickly search the contents. The two main categories of search tools are subject directories and search engines. Both work in essentially the same way–you access the search site on the Web, type a keyword (or phrase) into a text box, and within seconds the program returns a list of clickable links.
Table of Contents
Subject
Directories
Search Engines
Search Techniques
Search Results: A Comparison
Finding Search Tools
General Search Tool URLs
Search Tools for Children
Subject Directories
Subject directories generally organize the topics by categories for people who want to browse through a list. Yahoo is the most popular subject directory. With Yahoo, you can type in a search word, or find the information you want by clicking on various topics and subtopics. All of the sites listed on Yahoo have been reviewed by humans. Yahoo also provides a directory, Yahooligans, for school-age children.
The Yahoo main subject directory
page
Search Engines
Search engines are powerful tools that index thousands of Web sites (through a computer program), and the indexes are updated almost continuously. When you enter a keyword into a search engine, you will receive a list with the number of "hits" (links to related sites). The number of hits you receive may vary a great deal among different search engines because some of the engines are created based on the titles of Web sites and others are based on the full text of the Web sites. Also, some of the engines index several hundred million documents and some index fewer than 1 million.
The Google search engine banner
Search Techniques
The techniques used to limit the number of hits will vary among the different search tools. For best results, read the search tips or hints that are provided at each search site. Common commands include:
|
"..."
|
Using quotation marks will help to find specific phrases involving more than one word. Example: "Manatee County" will locate only articles with the words next to each other. |
|
+
|
Adding a + sign before a word means that it MUST be at each site listed. Example: +manatee +Florida will find articles that include both words. |
|
-
|
Adding a - sign before a word means that it will NOT appear on sites listed. Example: +manatee -Florida will find articles that do NOT include the word Florida in the title. |
Search Results: A Comparison
Let's say you wanted to conduct an Internet search for the word manatee. The chart below shows the results of this search with various search tools:
|
Search
Tool
|
#
of hits
|
| Yahoo |
494,000
|
| WebCrawler | 68 |
| Excite |
82
|
| Go Network |
218,000
|
| Lycos |
811,447
|
| Fast |
783,255
|
| AltaVista |
207,888
|
| iWon |
311,000
|
|
728,000
|
|
| HotBot |
188,375
|
Finding Search Tools
Both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer provide a convenient place to locate search tools. For example, if you click on Netscape's Search button, you will arrive on a page that provides quick access to over 20 different search tools.
The Netscape search button
Search Tool URLs
If you want to access a search tool directly, you can use the URLs listed below:
| AltaVista | http://www.altavista.com |
| Ask Jeeves | http://www.ask.com |
| Excite | http://www.excite.com |
| Fast | http://www.alltheweb.com |
| Go Network | http://infoseek.go.com |
| http://www.google.com | |
| GoTo | http://www.goto.com |
| HotBot | http://www.hotbot.com |
| iWon | http://www.iwon.com |
| LookSmart | http://www.looksmart.com |
| Lycos | http://www.lycos.com |
| MSN Search | http://search.msn.com |
| NBCi | http://home.nbci.com |
| Netscape | http://search.netscape.com |
| WebCrawler | http://www.webcrawler.com |
| Yahoo | http://www.yahoo.com |
Search Tools for Children
| AOL Kids Only | http://www.aol.com/netfind/kids/channel/ |
| Ask Jeeves for Kids | http://ajkids.com |
| Kids Click! | http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick! |
| Lycos Zone | http://www.lycoszone.lycos.com |
| OneKey | http://www.onekey.com |
| Yahooligans | http://www.yahooligans.com |
Produced, in part, under a grant from the Florida Department of Education and
the Office of Educational Technology
The Florida Center for Instructional Technology
This brochure may be copied for educational purposes.
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College of Education, University of South Florida
Director, Dr. Roy Winkelman
