Better Internet Searching

An Internet search uses keywords, not

questi ons.

KEYWORD any significant word or

phrase, especially a word used to describe

the contents of a document

It is better to search with two or three keywords or

phrases.

Proper nouns (names) and numbers are good

keywords.

Articles (the, a, an), pronouns (he, she, it, him, etc.), and prepositions (of,

for, etc.) are not good keywords.

Use quotations to

search an exact phrase.

Searching Marti n Luther King will fi nd any website with the

word Marti n, Luther, or King.

Searching “Martin Luther King” will find only websites

with that exact phrase.

The phrase search using quotations will find fewer articles than the keyword

search without quotations, and the articles will be

more relevant.

The search without quotati ons fi nds

19,000,000 arti cles. Using quotati ons fi nds 12,500,000.

I want to research if cell phones should be banned in public

schools.

My keywords will be cell phones and public schools. I can use

quotations to make the search more exact.

Searching “Cell phones” AND “public schools” will find websites that include both phrases. (If you use Google, you do not have

to include the AND.)

Searching without quotes—606,000

results. Searching with quotes—391,000

results.

If I use the quotes and add the word ban to

the search, I get 103,000 results. More keywords yields fewer

results.

AND--results that contain every word in your search.OR– results contain at least one of your search terms.NOT--used to weed out a specific term.

If I want information about Martin Luther, but not

Martin Luther King, Jr., I could search “Martin

Luther” NOT King.

Using NOT reduces my results from 19,000 to

10,900.

Add a dash (-) before a word to exclude all results that include that word. This is especially useful for synonyms like Jaguar the car brand and jaguar the animal.      

jaguar speed -car

You can also exclude results based on other operators, like excluding all results from a specific site.       

pandas -site:wikipedia.org

Do not give me results from Wikipedia, since my teacher won’t let me use that website.

Include "site:" to search for information within a single website like all mentions of "Olympics" on the New York Times website.  

   

Olympics site:nytimes.com      

Tip: Also search within a specific top-level domain like .org or .edu

Results only from government websites:   Olympics site:.gov

Results only from educational websites.Olympics site:.edu

Use an asterisk (*) as a placeholder for any unknown terms. Use with quotation marks to find variations of that exact phrase.

   "a * saved is a * earned" is the search to find the missing word penny in the phrase “a penny saved is a penny earned.”

Finding so many results is a good reason to try your search in the databases before you try a general Internet search. You get

fewer, more reliable results.

THE FIVE W’S OF WEB SITE EVALUATION

WHO

Who wrote the pages and are they an expert? Is a biography of the author included? How can I find out more about the author?

WHAT

What does the author say is the purpose of the site? What else might the author have in mind

WHEN

When was the site created? When was the site last updated?

WHERE

Where does the information come from? Where can I look to find out more about the sponsor of the site?

WHY

Why is this information useful for my purpose? Why should I use this information? Why is this page better than another?

©2001-2009. Kathy Schrock. All rights reserved. Page may be reproduced for classroom use.