Search Techniques for the Search Savvy

What to use? Search Engines –Detailed –Very complete –Current –Harvested by BOTS –Generally sites do not pay to be on search engines –GoogleGoogle Search Directories –Encyclopedia like –Organized by topic –Often sites pay to be listed –YahooYahoo

Other vehicles to use Invisible Web –usually organized like a search directory –Behind a database and therefore unsearchable by another database –Often yields specialized information –BeaucoupBeaucoup Meta Search Engines –Compile results by searching other search engines –Can be limited by the engines being searched - Vivisimo- clustered meta search engineVivisimo

Represents about 1/3 of web

Be sure to put the search criteria in the correct location Enter key search words here URL’s go here

Inefficient searching gets too much information Use more than one word List is organized by how many links a site has

What can you learn from an item in your list? Math.com - World of Math Online Free math lessons and math homework help from basic math to algebra, geometry and beyond. Students, teachers, parents, and everyone k - 16 Aug Cached - Similar pagesMath.com - World of Math Online CachedSimilar pages Some of site content taken verbatim from site. Uniform Resource Locator (URL) Size Saved on Google server Other related sites

Refining your search Get more specific

Time to apply Advanced Search Techniques The words- math fraction lesson plans are yielding results of a word by word search By looking in the large category of math and then by grouping fraction lesson plans together we will get very different results Put fraction lesson plans in the exact phrase section of the advanced search in Google By the search button- click on advanced searchadvanced search

Math “fractions lesson plans” Use quotations for exact phrase- helps with refining search and also when checking for plagarism

Other ways to refine your search Use a tilde ~ to get synonyms of your search (you don’t have to know the synonyms to use this trick)

Use symbols + means you want one word and the other word to both be included in your search results

Or if you want dogs but do not want any references to cats use the – symbol Be sure that the – symbol does not have a space by the word you want to leave out

And, or, but, not are used in Boolean search engines/dire ctories and are very much like the symbols An example of this - EBSCO EBSCO

You have been there before and know what you want but not quite where to find it? Search by domain restriction Curriculum site:southshore. ednet.ns.ca

Need some numerical information? A price range, dates, or other sequential numbers Put in what you want followed by the number range. The numbers will be separated by two dots Olympic records

Key words to help your searching Define - define pesticides Related- or use similar in page-specific search section of advanced search Info Inurl (to get a URL with what you want in the title) or use Occurances in advanced search Link (to similar websites or to check validity of site) or use links in page-specific search section of advanced search

Other Advanced Search Functions Search in different languages By format By date By where key words appear on page Filtering results

Google Search Tabs

A closer look Google Images Google News

Google Services

Other ways that Google can help with answers Calculator/ ConverterCalculator Travel Information And more on their information and search pages

By refining your search techniques you will… Save time Find more accurate information Become more search savvy!