Basic Searching Tools

1
Basic Searching Tools

• Internet disorganization caused two type of
  services to be developed (almost accidentally)
• Subject Trees, or Directories (Yahoo)
• Search Engines (Altavista, Lycos, Google)
• These two are now augmented with specialty
  engines or information repositories
• Clearinghouse a specialized subject tree.
• Specialized Search Engine Restricted to
  specific subject areas.
• Speciailized search engines are harder to build
  than general.
• Generic search engines use spiders (virtual
  robots) that search the web
• When a spider finds your web site it will
  traverse every link you have and add it to its
  database.
• Specialized search engines require humans to fill
  content.
• If you want your web site to be seen
• Register with search engines.
• Use the Keyword feature of HTML. Keywords are
  seen by search engines, but not viewers.

2
Basic Searching Techniques

• Voyager Questions
• Open- ended exploratory question
• Requires time and investigation of multiple
  sources
• Deep Thought Questions
• More focused than Voyager Questions.
• Requires investigation of multiple sources.
• Joe Friday Questions
• Simple factual request.
• Often requires finding only one reliable web page
  having the facts in question.

3
Basic Searching Techniques

• Using Logical Connectors (Altavista)
• Default is or dog cat means find documents
  with the word dog, or the word cat.
• required dog cat means document must
  contain dog and cat
• Quotes indicate a phrase dog cat means the
  exact phrase dog cat must appear.
• - leave out dog cat means documents with the
  word dog, but not cat.
• Using canned choices (Yahoo)
• Similar to AltaVista, but not as flexible.
• Using natural language (MS Help, Ask Jeeves).
• Difficult due to natural language interpretation
  constraints.

4
Author Credibility

• Is the author the author? No plagiarism.
• Is the author qualified?
• Backs up claims with their own publications.
• Backs up claims with degrees, certificates,
  experience.
• Has good reputation in the community.
• Is the author accurate?
• Information is consistent with other sources.
• Can the information be verified? Are other
  sources cited?
• Is the author objective?
• What is the authors motivation?
• Does the author present multiple sides to
  arguments.