SEARCH ENGINE STRATEGY, TIPS AND TECHNIQUESBy Ralph D. Thomas
SEARCH ENGINE STRATEGY, TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
No matter what sites you are trying to get to and find on the web, you'll
likely use search engines often. Without search engines, looking something
up on the Internet would be almost impossible.The problem with search engines
is that you either get too many hits or two few hits. Most of us enter a
key word and then hit search. However, there are some very unique strategies
that you can use and different search engines you can use in different ways.
Let us take a look at knowledge to help you search the web wih search engines
with better results.
Keyword Searching
Keyword searching is using a key word to find what you are looking for.
It's perhaps the most common form of search engine searching. Here are some
types with using keyword searches.
A) Search your own mind and determine the most unique keyword you can think of. This will help lower the hit rate. Unique key words are important, otherwise you will get too many hits to review. Try to come up with sub-key words. By that, you automatically lower your number of hits because what you are doing with your mind is narrowing your search. I like Infoseek because it gives you the ability to conduct another search after you already performed one searching only the contents of your first list.
B) Know if upper and lower case mean anything on the search engine you
are using.
C) Check a few like sites and see what keywords are used for those sites.
D) If at first you don't get what you want, try again and again. I keep a Franklin Language next to me. It is a pocket sized electronic version of a combined dictionary and a thesaurus. Use these to check spellings of key words. When you look up their definitions, you might find other key words and when you use the thesaurus you can easily find like meaning words.
E) Know your search engine. Almost all of them have help menus and how
to do it pages. Take the time to read them.
There are a number of advanced techniques you can use but in order to use
them, you will have to check the search engine you want to use to utilize
them to make sure you are doing it correctly and every one is different.
For example, Webcrawler doesn't need any phrase commands at all as it really
is a search engine by phrase. The more words you add to the input, the narrower
your search is going to be. But some search engines will require you to
use the Phrase Command.
PHRASE SEARCHING: Generally phrases are placed in "". That is:
"Surveillance Investigator"
Any time you have more than one key word, you have a phrase. Although each
search engine is different, know when you should use this method.
AND SEARCHING: When you place the word AND between two key words,
you are telling the search database that you want to pull only listings
with those key words. The most common way this is done is with a + for example:
+investigative +resources. You will find that some search engines make it
easy to use the AND search by offering you a click option.
OR SEARCHING: To example your hit list, use OR. it's like saying find anything with this OR that.
NOT SEARCHING: Not gives you the ability to weed out certain key
words on your final list. You usually put a negative sign in front of your
word for this search.
For example: let us say you want to search the word investigator bot not
private investigators. You might use this: investigator-private. The database
will pull up all investigator pages but not private investigator pages.
NEAR SEARCHING: Sometimes it is useful to use a keyword and tell the database you want a keyword that's near another word. You can specific the word count from the main keyword with NEAR SEARCHES. For example: Investigator NEAR/15 "surveillance issues". What you will pull up is site with the word investigator in it with the phrase "surveillance issues" fifteen words of closer to the main keyword" investigator.
WILDCARD SEARCHES: Wildcards searching generally places the symbol "*" after a word. It tells the database to look for variations of that word. For Example:
Investigation*
Might pull sites with words such as investigation, investigator, and
investigative.
NESTED SEARCHING: Nested searching is usually one or more of the
specialized search strategies describe above together. It might look something
like this:
Investigator NEAR (Texas OR Tx)
In the above example, you should pull investigators in Texas or TX.
A HUGE SELECTION OF SEARCH ENGINE KNOWLEDGE
For More Information On Searching the web techniques, try these very good
sites:
THE SEARCH ENGINE WATCH
http://SearchEngineWatch.com/
A huge newspaper that keeps you up-to-date on search engines and how to
use them.
CHOOSE
THE BEST SEARCH ENGINE FOR YOUR SEARCH NEEDS
http://www.nueva.pvt.k12.ca.us/~debbie/library/research/adviceengine.html
A huge collection of material on diferent aspects of using search engines
to find what you are looking for and how to know which search engine to
use.
It helps to search on more than one search engine. In my experience, I have rated the top search engines you can use and give you many general comments on them.
AltaVista
http://www.altavista.digital.com
I like AltaVista mainly because it seems to index more pages than any of
the others. It's also very fast and seems to get new pages up faster than
most. The AltaVista people have added a "REFINE" button to their
searching you should check out. Take a look at it--it's quite interesting
and useful. It gives you as list of major words found on your keyword search
based on the contents of those hits and can choose to require or exclude
and then search again.
Infoseek
http://www.infoseek.com
Although Infoseek doesn't seem to be as comprehensive than AltaVista in
the number of pages it has indexed, it often has new pages before Infoseek.
This is likely because if you have a web site, you can get it indexed and
the index starts appearing in a matter of minutes as apposed to days with
AltaVista. One of the best features of Infoseek is it's ability to let you
run a second search on top of your first search with narrower key words
and only pull from the first hit list. That's very useful. Infoseek also
has an advanced search that you can use that you should take a look. It's
based on "must" "Should" or "Should Not" searching
by phrase, name or word. Very useful in narrowing your search.
Excite
http://www.excite.com
Excite is powerful and fast. I would say it indexes about as many pages
as Infoseek but not quite as fast. Excite has some unique advanced searching
ability that I love. One you get your list, at the top of the search page
you will find a list of other key words you can add to your search just
by clicking on it. I think that these words are based on the most frequently
occurring words found in the contents of your first search. Note that is
you search the word investigator, NAIS comes up-I strong indication of massive
indexing of the huge NAIS site. Excite also offers a "find pages list
this" after each listing which will further narrow your search-try
it--you'll like it.
Webcrawler
http://www.webcrawler.com
This is the first search engine I ever used and it's better today than it
ever was. You can have it show or hide summaries. I have noted lately that
when many articles review search engines, they are not including Webcrawler
in their list of top seven or eight. That's likely because it seems to run
slower than the others listed above. Webcrawler gives you a percentage rating
based on your keywords and gives you a "find similar pages option which
is quite useful.
Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com
Yahoo is a directory. I like it because of the way it is organized. It's
fast and has categories with massive numbers of subcategories below it.
This makes the whole searching process very easy on Yahoo. Although a directory,
I have fond what I wanted when the above search engines have failed me.
HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com
I use Hotbot when I want to find a company narrowed by geography. It's a
great place for that.
Lycos
http://www.lycos.com
Lycos is a powerful place but has a special interest in it's ability to
do specialized searches for graphics and sound files.
I hope I have shared some of what I have learned about searching on search engines. Watch for a future article on: SEARCHING IN NEWSGROUPS AS AN INVESTIGATIVE TOOL.
My Best,
Ralph D. Thomas
Email: RThomas@aol.com