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 | Subject Directories: Yahoo, AltaVista, &
Open Directory
Information is stored as a "hierarchy of categories". You narrow your search by "drilling down" into ever more specific
sub-categories.
Use a directory when you need help narrowing a broad search. |
| Search Engines (Google, Excite, HotBot, Ask Jeeves, &
AllTheWeb)
Use when you have a narrow topic or you're looking for a
specific site. |
Other Types of Search Engines:
The "Deep Web" consists of information stored in databases.
Since spiders are reluctant or incapable of indexing these sites, much of this
information remains hidden from the casual searcher. The deep web is
estimated to be several hundred times larger than the "static" or
"surface" web. Many of these sites will be listed in Subject
Directories, but a more comprehensive listing can be found at The
Invisible Web or CompletePlanet.
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It's easy to unnecessarily overcomplicate the process of searching.
Enter your search term(s) and look at the results. First I searched on strawberry
pie. This request will find all the documents that have either strawberry
or pie somewhere on the page. The
search returned 92,600 hits:
Next I added quotation marks to my search terms to indicate that strawberry pie
is a phrase. Phrase searching is one of the most productive types of
searches. Now the phrase "strawberry
pie" is required to register a hit. The search only
returns 5,490 hits, but they will be more
productive hits than the first search.
Finally I added the words diabetic & recipe
to the phrase "strawberry pie".
Now my search returns 226 high-quality hits.
Near the bottom of the search results page (next to the 
button) is a link that says: "Search within
results". Clicking on this link after adding another
keyword to your search will limit Google's next search to the hits currently
displayed.
You may further refine your searches by using boolean words or operators, but
that will generally not be necessary. Try using quotations
(indicates a phrase), plus signs (indicates a word that MUST be included),
minus signs (indicates a word that must be excluded, or ANDs. You have many more options, but I would suggest you access the
site's help if you need them.
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| Set display to 100 items instead of 10 if possible so that you don't have
to continually page through your results. |
| Use the headlines, titles, and summaries to avoid links that are likely to
be unproductive. |
| Capitalization - don't use it if there's any chance that your term(s)
might not be capitalized. It's generally safest/best to put everything
in lower case. |
| Use Ctrl + F to search the page that Internet Explorer is
currently displaying (No, not just THIS page, but any page IE
displays <grin>) |
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| Google
Advanced Search - lets you readily add more powerful features to your
search. |
| Google will search a dictionary for you. Enter your search term
normally, when you see the following message ("pandemonium" is the
search term): 
clicking on the underlined word will take you to a dictionary &
thesaurus. |
| Search on any combinations of first name, last name, street address,
city, state, zip code, & phone number. Google may
be able to fill in the rest of the information plus show you a map. |
| Google will search the Web for pictures also. Click the Image Tab
on the main Google page. |
| At the end of every Google search are 2 hotlinks: Cached & Similar
pages. Clicking on Cached will take you to a cached version
of the link as it was at the time it was indexed (try this if you get a 404
error when you try to access the indexed page). Your search term(s)
will be color-coded on the cached pages. Clicking on Similar pages
will take you to a page that is similar in content to the currently indexed
page. |
| [search terms] site:[domain
name] will direct Google's engine to search ANY domain.
This tip is very helpful when you couple the strength of Google's search
engine with the power of a site like Microsoft's Knowledge Base
(ex: windows shutdown problems site:microsoft.com).
You may also use this feature from within Google's Advanced Search
feature by specifying the Domains field. |
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| BullsEye - Intelliseek's great
tool, but they're charging $49 for it these days |
| Copernic - free - claims to access
80 search engines grouped into 7 categories |
| LexiBot
- is a $90 tool for searching the Deep Web |
| Webferret - free - been around
for a long time. |
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Usenet is a worldwide bulletin board system accessed via the Internet.
Usenet contains thousands of Newsgroups. Newsgroups are online discussion
groups or forums that are used daily by millions of people around the
world. They are great places to get access to more detailed technical
information.
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Microsoft's Knowledge Base
is the database that Microsoft Support Techs query to help solve problems with
Microsoft software. It is free and available to the public as well.
Here are a couple of tips for using it.
How
to Query the Microsoft Knowledge Base Using Keywords is a Microsoft white
paper that will help you improve the quality of your Knowledge Base
searches. It includes a list of keywords that you will find useful
You can also use Google's engine to query the Knowledge Base:
- Go to Google's Advanced
Search
- Enter microsoft.com for the return results from the site or
domain field
- Add kb to your query (this will ensure that all of your hits come
from the Knowledge Base).
Advanced Tip: All KB articles have a "Q"
number (Example: Q242450). Do you already know the Q article
number? If you're using Internet Explorer, you can enter mskb
followed by the Q number to go directly to the document (Example: mskb
242450)
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