Internet Search Tools and Strategies

1
Internet Search Tools and Strategies

• Powell County Technology Day
• August 1, 2007
• Jennifer Francis Media Specialist, Bowen
  Elementary

2
Ice-breaker

• Introduce yourself to the group
• who are you, what do you do?
• Tell us what your favorite search engine is

3
Purpose of Today's Workshop

• Introduce you to some different search tools
• Demonstrate some different search strategies
• Explore some possible tools to use with students
  when they're searching

4
Review Browser Features

• Internet Explorer type of browser there are
  others, but we use this one at school
• Menubar
• Toolbars
• Newest update of IE has tabbed browsing
• URL and address box

5
Portals

• Offer search, directory, and many other general
  services such as email, free home page building,
  news, popular topics, etc. Well-known ones
  include Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN.

6
Search Engines

• Indexing the words on every page in their
  database (full text searching), a search engine
  covers Web pages and can include billions of
  pages.

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Meta-Search Engines

• Search engines that search search engines ?
• Advantages - broad feel for what is "out there"
  on your topic. Some offer help with narrowing a
  topic such as Clusty.

8
Directory

• A subject directory includes selected  Web sites
  (more often than pages) and humans classify them
  into hierarchical subject categories. Most
  portals have one and some specialized directories
  are available by themselves.
• They do not index every word on every page
  included (subject searching as opposed to full
  text searching).

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Search Engines vs. Directories
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Search Engines vs. Directories
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Activity

• Go to http//www.powell.k12.ky.us/jfrancis/search
• Elementary/Middle people Try searching the term
  human body at Google, Yahooligans, KidsClick, and
  Ask for Kids. Note the number of hits and the
  type of hits
• Middle/High School Try searching the term civil
  rights at Google, Yahoo, Yahoo Web Directory, and
  LII. Note the number of hits and the type of hits

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The Point?

• Search engines returned many more hits. Some
  useful, some not. Have to weed a lot to find
  useful info. Credibility of some sites
  questionable.
• Directory returned fewer hits, but more focused
  on topic - also many of the directories allow
  "Trace searches" to occur increasing the number
  of relevant references.

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Search Engine Strategies

• Boolean Searching
• Often is symbol for AND
• - symbol for NOT
• OR
• These can be especially useful commands with
  homographs like bass, sound, bow
• Try bass then bass -fish -fishing at Google
• Come up with a strategy for searching sound as
  in the body of water.

14
Search Engine Strategies

• Phrase searching
• Enclose phrases in quotes to get a more precise
  search (can also catch internet plagiarism this
  way!
• Observe the number and preciseness of hits with
  the following Google searches
• 1st try - drug use athletes
• then - "drug use among athletes"
• finally - "drug use among high school athletes"

15
Finding Info on a Retrieved Page

• Ever retrieve a page or document and its so long
  you dont have time to read down to find what you
  need?
• To very quickly find the concept you are looking
  for on a page
• Click EDIT on the menubar then click FIND ON THIS
  PAGE and enter the term you want it to find.

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Advanced Search Features

• differ depending on the tool being used. Can
  usually find them by clicking "advanced search or
  help" see handout
• Some favorites
• searching by file type
• Advanced Search at Google search by pdf's, ppts,
  and others
• Yahoo can search for Audio (songs/sounds), Video,
  and Images
• specific commands
• Google's command define to get a definition in a
  hurry

17
Nesting

• in boolean searching, a set of search terms
  arranged sequentially within a larger set the
  order in which terms are set may determine the
  nature of the retrieved results. An example of
  nesting is humans AND (genetic engineering OR
  cloning).
• Nesting can't be used at all sites - can be done
  at Yahoo (and I've found it handy on EBAY! e.g.
  want a sweater with either ladybugs or
  butterflies on it)

18
Natural Language Search Engines

• Account for how a person would ask a question
  about a topic (e.g. like Ask or AskforKids)
• Go to one of these sites and try a natural
  language search

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URL

• Stands for Uniform Resource Locator. Can
  sometimes guess these. Example url for Amazon
  bookstore is www.amazon.com However, the URL
  guessing strategy can lead to wrong guesses which
  retrieve sites that may pretend to be something
  that they are not. Strongly discourage using this
  at work or with students! Suffix is also
  indicator of credibility of website.
• .com commercial site
• .gov or .mil U.S. government site
• .edu U.S. higher education site
• . org for other organizations, but can be used by
  anyone
• .net for networks, but can be used by anyone
• Can you guess the url for Harvard University? for
  US Environmental Protection Agency?

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URL Trimming

• Can also sometimes trim back a URL when you've
  done a search and find something helpful to
  "TRACE" or backmap to more potentially useful
  pages. Trim back to slashes.
• Example
• http//searchengineshowdown.com/strat/basicsearch.
  html
• Watch what happens when we trim back to the
  nearest slash.

21
Other Search Tools

• There are tons of other online search tools such
  as online dictionaries, almanacs, encyclopedias.
• Advantage of online dictionaries/electronic
  dictionaries is that guide words are not needed
  to gain access.
• Explore some of the various search tools at
• http//www.powell.k12.ky.us/jfrancis/search

22
Research Tool you can Use

• Trackstars
• can create webliographies for students to provide
  structure when searching and teach them
  strategies to use to search in the annotations.
  You have to register for this. Also note that
  4teachers.org has other great cutting edge
  educational tools to use!
• http//trackstar.4teachers.org/
• Example Track Number 258311

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Wrap up

• Share one resource or tip you found/got that you
  can use

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Take Home Messages

• Variety of search tools
• Search engines are full text searching tools with
  billions of pages in their databases
• Directories are subject searching and are
  catalogued. Fewer pages in databases but pages
  have been reviewed.
• Quotes are an easy way to narrow a search with
  phrase searching. , - , OR
• Advanced Search or Help at search tools can open
  your eyes to a variety of strategies.