Post on 28-Mar-2015
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.