Power Searching Tips for the Web and Online Databases
Evaluate your results and change strategies if you are not satisfied. Change databases or search engines. Read the search tips or help menus found at most sites. Try the strategies listed below to become a powerful searcher and mine the riches of the Internet.
| +, 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: |
| 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. |
(c) Joyce Valenza-2004
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MTHS LIBRARY Homepage, Mountlake Terrace High School |