| +, AND |
Limits your search, requires all words appears: Vietnam
AND protest AND students +Japan +cooking +eagles +habitat + endangered |
| OR |
Is used to capture synonyms or related words: Car or automobile
coronary OR heart |
| -, NOT, AND NOT |
Eliminates possibilities that you suspect will cause problems:
Martin Luther NOT King
+eagles –Philadelphia –football |
| NOTE: |
Most search engines let you use “+” and “-“ for AND and NOT
(no spaces) |
| Wildcards,Truncation,Stemming |
Most search engines let you use * to stand for any character (wild
card) which can be helpful when you are unsure of spelling or you want
variations of a word. Try a “?” to substitute for one letter either
in the middle or end of a word. Teen* (picks up teenage, teenagers or
teens) Herz* (for Herzegovina) s?ng (for sing, sang, sung) |
| Phrases |
Phrase searching can improve your results by locating your search
terms in a specific order. Quotation marks “ “ set words off as
phrases to be searched as one term. “vitamin a” “DaVinci Code”
“University of Washington” |
| Proximity |
Words are often not meaningful in a search unless they appear near
each other in a document. In large documents, words separated by lots of
other words are usually not helpful. Many search engines/databases allow
proximity searching. Near/25 (Alta Vista, AOL Search and Lycos) finds
two words that appear within 25 words of each other Example: Eric
Clapton NEAR/10 |
| Field Searching |
This strategy restricts searching to certain portions of web
documents. You can specify that search terms appear in the title, or
URL. Title: cancerURL: epaDomain:edu + “graphic organizers”Inurl:
nasa (used in Google) |
| CaseSensitivity |
Most search engines are case insensitive by default so use lowercase
letters. In some cases using uppercase can be helpful like:Baker gets
the proper name and not the profession of bakingAIDS eliminates
references to helpersChina eliminates references to dishes |
| Searching within your Search |
You can often improve your results by searching for targeted words
within your results. Look for a “search within results” feature (Google).
If this feature does not exist you can use yoru browser’s own
“find” feature to search the text of each page. |
| Natural Language Searches |
Some search engines allow you to use natural language like Ask Jeeves. |
| Directories = topicORSearch Engines= keywords |
People who make decisions about how to organize web sites create
directories like Yahoo, Google Directory and Librarian’s Index of the
Internet. Use a directory when you have a general topic and want high
quality results. Search Engines use robots to index large databases of
web sites. You have to be a skilled searcher to get high quality
results. Use a search engine when you have several key words or want to
get an idea if what is “out there” They can be useful in bringing up
key words to use in a directory. Keep working to refine your search
terms to get the best results. |
| Directories |
Google Directory http://directory.google.comYahoo!
http://yahoo.comLibrarian’s
Index of the Internet http://lii.orgINFOMINE Virtual Library http://infomine.ucr.edu/
About.com http://about.comWWW Virtual Library http://vlib.org/ |
| Search Engines |
Google http://google.com AllTheWeb http://alltheweb.com Alta Vista
http://altavista.comTeoma http://teoma.comWiseNut http://wisenut.com |
| PremiumDatabases |
The free web is not enough! Remember the library catalog for books on
your subject. These three resources are available to you because Edmonds
School District paid money for you to have access to them. Try them
first before you Google, you’ll be glad you did. |
