SUBJECT DIRECTORIES, SEARCH ENGINES,
& META SEARCH ENGINES
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Millions of information sources are virtually at your fingertips. Using the Internet, you search for documents, and gain access to pictures, video clips, and audio clips without leaving your chair. But in order to avoid wading through millions of results, you need to know where to search and how to develop a successful search strategy. See the link below to the Web tutorial created by a librarian-this should help you develop a clear understanding of planning your search queries.
Remember that every site is likely to yield slightly different results.
Subject Directories
People maintain these popular directories, or subject trees. Broad categories are broken down into smaller sub-topics. These directories are good for finding general information on popular topics. In most cases, searches done on these directories will yield fewer results, as compared to those done by search engines. Some of the most popular directories include:
Special Subject Directories for Student Homework Help
-Go to top-
Search Engines
Search engines use computer programs called spiders or robots to crawl the Web and log the words on each page into databases. These databases are very large and can generate a huge number of results for every search performed. It’s important to use different search strategies to limit the number of results and find relevant information.
-Go to top-
Meta Search Engines
These are powerful tools that search through several different search engines and directories at the same time and sort by relevancy. Some cluster the responses into categories, others remove duplicate results. MelZoo is a new meta search engines that give you a visual preview!
-Go to top-
General Search Strategies
- Identify key words to use in searching
- Identify variations or synonyms for the search words
- Enclose phrases inside of quotation marks
- Use and, or, and not to combine search terms
- Use + and – signs immediately before a word to include or exclude a word (for example, dolphins –Miami looks for sites with dolphins but not Miami Dolphins)
- Use the asterisk * as a wild card to look up different forms of a root word (for example, los* searches for lost, loss, lose, losing. losers, etc.)
- Add the word title followed by a colon immediately before a word or phrase to search for pages that have the search term in the title of the page (for example, Title: “George Washington” will search for pages with George Washington at the top of the page)
- Check your spelling
- Try the same search query at more than one site
- Keep accurate records of successful searches
-Go to top-
Tutorial: Search the Web
The site below was developed by a librarian and is well worth a visit. There are many examples of different search techniques that help to make searching more efficient and more effective.
Finding it Online: Web Search Strategies
-Go to top-
Print
version of page
Email
page to a friend