WWW Search Strategies

URL:http://steenbock.library.wisc.edu/instruct/www-search-strategies.html

Overview of Strategies

Open a URL and Browse Links/When URL Doesn't Connect

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is a case and space sensitive address of a file on the Internet. If you type in a URL or click on a URL from search engine results and the URL doesn't connect, there are some things you can check.
Example: ChildHealth USA at http://www.mchirc.net/CH-USA.htm

  • Check typing! URLs are extremely case sensitive. A lowercase letter in place of a capital letter can make the difference between connecting or not. Also, spelling errors, spaces or not using forward slashes in an address can make the link unsuccessful. If, in the above example, the capital CH-USA is typed as a lowercase ch-usa, connection will not be successful.
  • "Back-up" through the URL (by deleting from the end of the URL to the next / forward slash) until connection occurs. When connected, look at the page for clues on where the file might be as files frequently change names and paths. This technique is also useful when you can't tell who is responsible for a page.
  • Find the new URL by using a search engine.
  • Contact the webmaster of the site to ask where the file went. Sometimes the source has been removed from the site and is no longer available.
  • Use Internet Explorer's menu Edit/Find (On This Page) to look for a specific term within the current page.
  • Use Search feature from site (if available) to look for terms from that site only.

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Define Your Topic as Narrowly as Possible, and Identify Keywords

If you are not starting with a known URL, it's a good idea to think about your search topic before starting your search.

  • Write down your topic as a statement or a question and identify the key words or phrases.
    Example: What are the nutritional needs of older adults?

  • Identify specific keywords for the most important concepts you identified. Think of synonyms and include singular/plural forms, spelling variations, different word endings, etc. This is useful when using search engines so if one combination of terms gives poor results, you have alternatives to try. For the example of nutrition in older adults, keywords and concepts would be:
          nutrition
nutritional
diet
dietary
diets		 older
elderly
aged
senior
seniors
  • Identify broad subject areas that might include your topic. This is useful for finding information arranged by subject.
    Example: Health-Senior Health as found in Yahoo. (http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/)

  • Identify organizations or government agencies that might be involved with your topic. Use a search engine to get the URL and then browse or search the organization's site.
    Example: AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) or U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration on Aging would be relevant to search for information about Nutritional needs in Seniors.

For more details on how to break down your topic, ask your librarian or visit Webhound: Scoping the Search (http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/webhound/scope.html).

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Use a Search Engine/Index to Find Specific Information

Search engines are databases compiled by a computer program (robot, spider) that visits millions of web pages and brings back selected information to its computer. This information is turned into a database that has a search engine which allows you to enter keywords or phrases to identify links to Internet documents. What you get from an individual search engine depends on what the robot was programmed to retrieve.

If the database is not updated frequently, the links it retrieves may not work. Why? Web sites frequently change their file/path structure or remove files. As not one search engine covers the entire Internet, you may need to use several if looking for something very specific. Unfortunately, search engine searching frequently retrieves too many documents, many irrelevant, when looking for common subjects.

Comparison of Search Engines

When deciding which search engine to use, the size of the search engine and the user/search interface are the most important features to consider. Do the user/search interface options allow Boolean AND/OR/NOT, everyday natural language, field searching, or truncation? Speed, help, and how it displays results may also affect your choice of which search engine to use.

It's a good idea to do a trial search in several search engines and compare the results before choosing your first choice search engine. Although Internet Explorer (IE) links only to the MSN search engine under the menu View/Explorer Bar/Search, I prefer Google so I added Google (http://www.google.com) to my IE Favorites. I now use the free Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/) software which allows me to have a Google search box open whenever I use IE.

To find in-depth reviews of and links to search engines, go to Search Engine Showdown (http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/) or Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/). See also Selected Individual Search Engines below.

Search Tips

  • Learn one or two search engines well. Read the help/tips screens on how to compose search queries to obtain the best results from the search engine.
  • Use lower case for most searches. In some search engines using Capital Letters may limit your search.
  • Put the most unique word first if not using natural language when searching.
  • Use phrase searching, usually placing double quote marks around a phrase, to narrow a search to adjacent words. Example: "elderly nutrition"
  • Include or exclude words with + - symbols in simple/default searches. Example: +elderly -nutrition means elderly must be in the search results but excludes nutrition so you won't get information about elderly nutrition.
  • Use the advanced/custom/power search options so you have more control over what you are searching.
    • Many support the Boolean Operators AND/OR/NOT which should be capitalized:
      • AND=All words must be in the document. Narrows the search results to documents containing both terms. elderly AND nutrition. Some search engines use an implied AND with a pull down menu saying "All of the words" or "Must" which does the same narrowing of results.
      • OR=Any of the words must be in the document. Elderly OR nutrition broadens the search results to any document with elderly in it or to any nutrition document, not necessarily elderly nutrition. Some search engines use an implied OR with a pull down menu saying "Any of the words" or "Should."
      • NOT=Removes documents containing this word. Elderly NOT nutrition narrows the search results to documents about the elderly, not elderly nutrition. Some search engines use AND NOT instead of NOT. Some pull down menus say "Must not."
  • Use field searching to limit your search to a particular field of a web page, such as the URL or title. Example: Google's intitle:nutrition inurl:fda says nutrition must be in the HTML title and fda must be in the URL host name, path, or file name.
  • Use truncation, a wild card symbol (often a *) at the end of a root word, to retrieve variants of the term. Example: nutri* retrieves nutrition, nutrient, nutritional. Some engines don't allow truncation, some do it automatically without your needing to add a wild card symbol. Check your search engine's help.

  • Try different keyword combinations if you are disappointed with your search results, or use another search engine. Use the search engine help/FAQ to for hints on how to improve your query.

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Selected Individual Search Engines

Use an individual search engine's features to narrow and refine your search. Consult the help screens for search examples and how to use the advanced/custom options.

  • Google (http://www.google.com/)
    One of the largest search engines, yet great for quickly finding a few good sites. Indexes pages by identifying the most frequently visited and linked pages. Use double quotes around phrases in default search, or choose "Search for pages that include the phrase" in Advanced Search. Automatically looks for term variations. Can use OR between related terms or put ~before term to get its synonyms. Example, ~vegan gets results similar to vegan OR vegetarian. Advanced Search allows you to limit by language, domain, or by date. If link to a search result doesn't connect, can use cached copy to see the page as it looked when added to their search engine database. Has many specialty search options such as Images, News, and Scholar (for scholarly literature). See More for Print (search copyrighted books) and Web Search Features such as Street Maps.

  • AllTheWeb (http://www.alltheweb.com/)
    Use double quotes around phrases or choose "the exact phrase." Search the "simple search" by using the + or - symbols in search query. "Advanced search" includes drop-down menus to search specific languages, words, and domains. No truncation.
  • Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com/)
    Good for hard to find information since entire web pages are searchable. Use double quotes around phrases in simple search. The Advanced search supports Boolean AND/OR/AND NOT/NEAR (within 10 words) searching as well as truncation * and field searching.

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Selected MetaSearch Engines

MetaSearch Engines send your search query to several individual search engine databases at one time and compile the results. Useful for doing simple searches and determining which search engine to use.

  • Ixquick (http://www.ixquick.com)
    Searches several search engines and gives the top 10 results from each without duplication. Can use natural language searching. Can use double quotes for phrases, +/-, or Boolean AND, OR, NOT searching. This engine tells which search engines found the page and the rank from their top ten results. If one search engine is showing a lot of good results, that search engine would be a good place to go to refine a search and find more. A great starting point!
  • MetaCrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com/index.html)
    Advanced Search gives you more options. Results sorted by search engine.

  • Search.com (http://www.search.com/)
    Use Research by Topic to limit searches to specialty search engines in topics such as reference, jobs, music, etc.

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Find Information Arranged by Subject

Sites arranged in subject categories by humans are useful for browsing. They're good for answering broad questions like, What's out there on ...(gardening, job hunting, etc.). They're also good for finding specific information about popular subjects such as a favorite sport or airline schedules. Most Subject Directories are compiled by experts in various fields and tend to have a smaller number of sites indexed. Some subject directories are also searchable.

Subject Directories can be thought of as the Table of Contents for the Internet.

  • Open Directory (http://dmoz.org/)
    Largest human-edited directory of the web. Many search engines use this directory for their own or reorganize the information. Example: Open Directory arranges links in categories alphabetically, Google Directory (http://directory.google.com/)organizes links in categories by popularity. Searchable.
  • Scout Report Archives (http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/archives/)
    "A searchable and browseable database to over nine years' worth of the Scout Report and subject-specific Scout Reports. It contains 16,969 critical annotations of carefully selected Internet sites. "
  • YAHOO (http://www.yahoo.com) Popular directory. Searchable.

Check your library. In addition to providing categorized links to Internet sites, your library may also link to resources only available to the library's authorized users. Example: UW-Madison Libraries links to Subject Guides (http://www.library.wisc.edu/subject/) in various disciplines. These link not only to Internet sites, but also to licensed resources such as Biological Abstracts or Proquest Newspapers which are available to authorized UW-Madison campus users.

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Use Subject Specific Databases/Sites for Specific Information

Contents of subject specific databases are usually not indexed by general Internet search engines. Example: Job postings at Careerbuilder.com (http://careerbuilder.com/).

To find searchable databases:

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Use Databases to Find Published Literature

Bibliographic databases, such as Medline or Agricola, may help you locate print resources not available electronically. Some of these databases can be accessed via the Internet. Once you identify citations with these databases, you may need to go to your library to obtain the materials.

A few databases are open for anyone to use.
  • Example: PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed) or library catalogs such as MadCat (http://madcat.library.wisc.edu/). These types of databases do not require that one belong or subscribe to any particular group in order to use.
  • Google Scholar, Google Print and Scirus are examples of web search engines searching for scholarly literature in web pages or in books.
Some are available to authorized users based on:
  • your computer's IP number which verifies you are an authorized user. Example: University of Wisconsin-Madison's WiscWorld software assigns IP numbers to let modem users into Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers. (http://www.library.wisc.edu/journals/journals.html) to search licensed databases such as Business Abstracts, PsychInfo, etc.
  • an authorized password. Examples: Help with Remote Access/Proxy Service for Electronic
    Resources     (http://www.library.wisc.edu/help/remote/remote-restrict.html) gives instructions on how to access UW-licensed resources via a proxy server by using your UW-Madison ID number and your last name.

Some are only available in a library because the database license agreement does not directly allow off-site users. Example: Film Index International at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • TIP: Open Internet Explorer's File/New/Window, then open MadCat, the library catalog for UW-Madison. Having an open window for the journal database and an open window for the library catalog allows you to switch between the two to find out if a library owns an item you identified in a journal literature search. Of course, if you spend too much time in either the journal database or the library catalog, the other might automatically time out and disconnect you. You can copy and paste information from most licensed databases into MadCat by using the IE menu Edit/Copy or Edit/Paste.

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Evaluate Quality of Information

Because anyone can and will post information on the Internet, it is important to evaluate the quality of the information you find. Checklist for Evaluating Web Sites (http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/Instruction/instmat/webeval.htm) is a one page list of questions to ask yourself. An interactive tutorial on Evaluating and Finding Quality Web Sites (https://wi.courses.wisc.edu/webct/public/home.pl) is available. Use guest as the WebCT ID and guest as the password. Evaluating Web Resources (http://www.widener.edu/Tools_Resources/Libraries/Wolfgram_Memorial_Library/Evaluate_Web_Pages/659) from Widener University has more resources on this topic.

Internet Citation Style Guides

The date on which you accessed a web page is needed for citing electronic materials in all citation style guides. Fill in the form citation builders are available from Citation Machine (APA, MLA) or Citation Builder (APA, MLA, CBE). For more styles and examples, see UW-Madison Writing Center Writer's Handbook (http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/Documentation.html) or Internet Citation Guides: Citing Electronic Sources in Research Papers and Bibliographies (http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/Memorial/citing.htm).

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Consider Copyright Before Using

Free and easy to get are not the same as "fair use." Assume most things on the Internet, including images, are copyrighted. Copyright and fair use information can be found at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, DoIT Learning Technology and Distance Education: Copyright and Intellectual Property Resources page (http://wiscinfo.doit.wisc.edu/ltde/gs/copyrt.htm). The Indiana University/Purdue University Copyright Management Center (http://www.copyright.iupui.edu) has great fair use checklists, scenarios, and seeking permission pages.

Web Tutorials

Try these tutorials for more practice with web skills.

  • Internet Tips and Search Engines (http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/Instruction/instmat/webtips.htm) for a short list of strategy tips and sources of more information.
  • Barebones 101 (http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/bones.html) offers general information as well as specific lessons on individual search engines.
  • Finding it Online: Web Search Strategies (http://www.learnwebskills.com/search/main.html) is an excellent interactive tutorial.
  • How to Be a WebHound (http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/webhound/index.html) Uses sample question to model finding information on the web, has worksheets for you to try your own question, and a fun scavenger hunt. Great site, especially for beginners!

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Acknowledgement: This document was written by University of Wisconsin-Madison Steenbock Memorial Library's Barbara Lazewski. Thanks to Lisa Jansen, UW-Madison's Internet Workshop Working Group, Michele Matuscheski, and Steenbock Librarians for their help in improving this document.