Getting the Most from Search Engines

1
Getting the Most from Search Engines

• Kristen Link
• August 4, 1999

2
Searching for Information on the Web

• Goals
• Decrease number of search results
• Increase number of relevant results
• Method
• Use any of several search tips and commands
• Search engines vary in terms of the commands they
  support (see handout)

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General Tips

• Use several search terms, not one
• Easter bunny origin not Easter or Easter
  bunny
• Be specific
• dog training, not animal training
• Use synonyms to get more results
• losing, lose, reduce, reduction
• Use lower case, unless case is important (e.g.,
  NeXT Software)

4
Search Command Options

• Search engine math
• Basic tips to improve your search
• Field searching
• Search for terms within specific parts of the
  document (e.g., title)
• Boolean and other advanced commands (e.g., AND,
  OR)
• Search assistance and display features
• Features of the engines, themselves

5
Search Engine Math

• Include term ()
• To ensure word is included in search
• e.g., camping Arkansas
• Exclude term (-)
• find pages that have one word on them, but not
  another word
• e.g., apples -computer
• Phrase (_)
• e.g., social psychology

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Search Engine Math II

• Match any term
• Automatic at most (see handout)
• Match all terms
• Use or menu automatic at some
• Truncation/Wildcard ()
• To find all forms of a word
• archaeolog (-y, -ical, -ist)
• Stemming finds all forms based on the stem
  automatically

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Field Searching and Limiting

• Title search -- to search for words w/in titles
  of web pages
• e.g., titleelephant species
• Site search -- to search w/in documents on a
  specific site
• e.g., domainmemphis.edu psychology
• URL search -- to search within the text of URLs
• e.g., urlmemphis.edu

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Field Searching and Limiting II

• Link search -- to search for pages that link to a
  particular page or domain
• e.g., linkpsyc.memphis.edu/students/../
• Limit by language
• Search for documents in a particular language
• Limit by date pages were created or modified

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Boolean Commands

• AND returns pages containing all search terms
  joined by AND
• e.g., Mars AND planet AND life
• OR returns pages containing any or all search
  terms joined by OR
• e.g., bed and breakfast or inn
• NOT returns pages containing the first but not
  the second term
• e.g., clinton NOT lewinsky

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Boolean Commands II

• NEAR returns pages containing keywords near each
  other on the page
• e.g., psychology NEAR history
• (distance can be specified in LY WC)
• Nesting Boolean commands provides for complex
  queries
• e.g., psychology AND (social OR cognitive) . . .
  If no parentheses . . .
• (psychology AND social) OR cognitive

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Combining Commands

• Examples
• (cat OR feline) AND endangered species
• titlepsychology dream -Freud
• star trek -voyager -deep space nine -next
  generation
• Works only if search engine supports each
  command, obviously

12
Search Assistance Features

• Related Searches
• Search engine provides related searches after a
  search is complete
• Find Similar
• Provides ability to find other pages that seem
  similar to those you like
• Search Within
• Do a second search within results already
  generated

13
Display Features

• Ability to sort results by date (created or
  modified), with most recent documents listed
  first
• Some search engines display the date page was
  created or modified
• Note dates can be unreliable (gotten from
  server)
• Ability to increase the number of results that
  are displayed

14
A Note about Meta-search Engines

• Dogpile and MetaCrawler will allow many of these
  commands, but if the engine they are polling does
  not, you may end up with funky results
• Sometimes, the syntax will be removed (e.g.,
  Boolean operators)
• At other times, however, they will become a
  keyword in the search (e.g., title)

15
Specialty Search Engines

• Catalog information particular to a narrow topic
  area
• Pro potentially more coverage versus the general
  search services
• Con dont provide you the search options and
  flexibility of general search engines
• A directory of search engines (general and
  specialty)
• www.beaucoup.com