Better Searching
There are maybe 8 billion pages on the web, and you want to find one of them.
But not just any page, you want the one with the
name and vital statistics of the champion
windscreen-wrecking Kea.
Let's assume you'd rather do this before the 12th blue moon, so chances are you'll use a web search engine to find relevant pages.
Web search engines come in two basic varieties. Directories, such as Yahoo! Or DMOZ are usually human-compiled and categorised, while 'pure' search engines rely on computer-gathered information.
These specialized computers, known as bots or spiders, crawl the web gleaning information, following links, storing both and presenting them as results to searchers.
Among the top search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Inktomi, and LookSmart.
But Google, a relative
latecomer launched in 1999, has come to dominate
by almost every criterion you can name, so much so
that it's become a verb, and thus deserves an explanation
of its quirks and tricks.
Because there are potentially thousands or millions of matches for many search terms, the trick is to narrow your search as far as possible. In the examples that follow, quotes should be used in the search itself only if double quotes are printed.
First, by entering more than one word in Google the engine will , be default, give higher priority to results featuring both words.. You'll get very different results, for example, from searching for Kennedy as against Kennedy assassination.
If you want to search for a particular phrase, you can narrow the search by putting quotes (") around it, for example if you search for "to be or not to be" instead of that phrase without quotes, you're much more likely to get information on Shakespeare's Hamlet.
You can also use what are called 'operators', plus(+) and minus (-) symbols to further refine searches.
For example, Rings is a hot topic now, thanks to
a certain chubby and charming fellow from down
the line who made some movies with that word in the title.
A search for Rings is likely to throw up references to those movies, but if you want information on any and all types of rings you might search for Rings -Lord, or Hurricanes -rugby for weather information.
If you wanted information on the rings event in gymnastics you might search for Rings +gymnastics and if you wanted to know where to get car parts you might search for Rings +piston +Dodge.
Another useful wee trick in Google is the qualifier site:. This limits searches to the top level domain indicated by whatever comes after site, for example .com ( commercial sites), .org (non-profits ), .edu ( educational ), .nz ( New Zealand sites), .mil ( military sites).
So if you wanted to know what the military, as opposed to the Press, are saying about weapons of mass destruction, you might search for "weapons of mass destruction" site:.mil.
You can also use the same syntax to limit
your searches to the titles of web pages
by using intitle:, or to the text of web
pages by using intext. A complete list of these operators is also available.
Google is a kind of Swiss Army knife of search engines, and for the lazy or curious is also a calculator ( 123456789*8 ), a measurement converter ( liters in a gallon ), and a product-code converter (9780140442731).
For its experimental functions, sometimes useful and often not, see http://labs.google.com/
For those who have no time for such dalliances, bear in mind two simple suggestions. First, look for pages which answer your question rather than those which ask it, secondly, bear in mind that Americans have trouble with 'labor', 'honor', and the like.
May your windscreen be safe from Keas.
April 4th, 2004
site by Urban Legend Designs