Search Tools

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Search Tools

• James C. Seidl
• Woodlands Library Cooperative

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Before you begin your search

• What are you searching for?
• What is a search tool?
• How do they work?
• Type of search tools for Web searching
• Keyword or Subject

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Web page

• Document type HTML
• Title
• Contents
• URLs
• Images
• Multimedia

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Search Types
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Subject

• When you want general information on a subject or
  topic
• Information is usually in a directory database
• www.yahoo.com
• mel.lib.mi.us

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Keyword

• When you want specific information
• Larger database with key words indexed
• Too many hits
• Correct term to use
• www.altavista.digital.com
• www.lycos.com

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Multi-search

• Speeds up the search process by searching several
  search engines at one time
• Often provides fewer references but more precise
• http//guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu2000/form
• http//www.webcrawler.com

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Boolean logic

• AND requires that both terms are present
• NEAR requires that one term must be found within
  a specified number of words
• OR requires that at least one term is present
• NOT excludes a term from a query

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Plus/Minus Signs

• Employs before a term retrieves only the
  document containing that term (AND)
• Employs - before a term to exclude that term
  from the search (NOT)

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Quote Marks

• Indicate that the words within the quote marks
  are to be treated as an exact phrase
• james seidl vs james seidl

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Quote marks search results

• james seidl
• altavista 110280
• hotbot 1,011

• james seidl
• altavista 16
• hotbot 6

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Truncation

• The ability of a search to include the stem or
  the main part of word
• Sing
• singer
• singing
• singalong

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Case Sensitive

• Capital words are treated as a single proper name
• Thomas Jefferson
• George Washington
• Albion

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Popular search topics

• People
• Maps
• Stocks
• Weather
• News
• Sport
• Travel

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www.yahoo.com
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mel.lib.mi.us
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www.altavista.digital.com
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www.lycos.com
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guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu2000/
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www.metacrawler.com