C. Search Engines

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: National Director of Knowledge Management McMillan LLP
• Pages: 116-120

Page 116

A basic technique for finding information on the Internet is to search for material by keyword using search engines. Search engine companies, such as Google, deploy special Web crawler computer programs (sometime referred to as "robots" or "spiders") to periodically mine through or "scrape" the full text of web pages on the Internet to index or catalogue words and other information found on those pages. The company then stores this information in its databases. When the researcher types in keywords in the search engine, a search is done against the site’s database (as opposed, typically, to a "live" search on actual web pages) to look for appropriate matches, leveraging any particular search algorithms applicable to the search engine. Although Google continues to dominate Internet search engines, there are an increasing number of new search engines that attempt to improve search results or that provide other features such as organizing your results to make them easier to review.

Table 5.1

Popular Internet Search Engines

Internet Search Engines Address

Alta Vista http://ca.altavista.com

Ask.com www.ask.com

Bing www.bing.com

Google www.google.ca

Yahoo! Search http://search.yahoo.com

Page 117

Not all search engines are the same - differences between search engines usually relate to any or all of the following three major factors:

(i) the number of pages "catalogued"; (ii) the frequency by which the search engine updates its database; and (iii) the level of sophistication of the different types of searches that can be run on the search engine. There are a number of useful websites that compare or rank search engines.⁶In addition, there are several basic techniques that apply to most search engines:⁷· Know your search engine - get to know one or two search engines well and do not be afraid to click on the "help" or "advanced find" link of the search engine to learn more about the search engine, such as whether it allows Boolean searching, truncation of terms, or nested searches.

· If you are getting too many results for your search ("4,045,720 pages found"), consider having at least four or five search terms in your search using the "and" format (an "and" search is now the default form of search in most Internet search engines so you usually do not need to add the word "and"). Also try to use unique terms whenever possible.

· Use phrases - most search engines allow phrase searches ("To Kill a Mockingbird"); this will usually...