Searching on the Internet

The invention of the Internet has changed the way people all over the world find information. Instead of using books, dictionaries, phone books, and maps, people often use the Internet to find the information they need. But finding the right information on the Internet can sometimes be difficult. If you know the address of the website you want to see, you can type the website address. But what if you don’t know the website address for the information you need? You should use a search engine. A search engine is a special kind of website that uses an algorithm that can help you find the information you need. Search engines do not search the whole web, but only an index of the web. Google, Bing, Ask, and Yahoo are all examples of search engines.

search engine– a program that searches for and identifies items in a database that correspond to keywords or characters specified by the user, used especially for finding particular sites on the World Wide Web.

algorithm- a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem, especially by a computer

When searching in a searching engine you usually use a keyword, keywords, or search terms. Focusing on KEY terms, not the “function” words, are important in order to carryout the best search engine result. When you use quotation marks around a phrase or keyword, you are telling the search engine to only bring back pages that include these search terms exactly how you typed them in order, proximity, etc.

There are a few other basic principles that you can successfully use in nearly all the search engines out there to find exactly what it is that you are looking for, and one of the most basic techniques is using the add and subtract symbols in your web search query. This is commonly known as Boolean search and is one of the most elementary techniques you can use in your search efforts (as well as one of the most successful). Most Internet search engines and Web directories default to these Boolean search parameters anyway, but a good Web searcher should know how to use basic Boolean operators. These techniques are simple, yet remarkably effective, and they tend to work in nearly all search engines and search directories on the Web.

query- a question, especially one addressed to an official or organization.

boolean search– Boolean searches allow you to combine words and phrases using the words AND, OR, NOT and NEAR(otherwise known as Boolean operators) to limit, widen, or define your search.

Boolean Search Operators

• The Boolean search operator AND is equal to the “+” symbol.
• The Boolean search operator NOT is equal to the “-” symbol.
• The Boolean search operator OR is the default setting of any search engine; meaning, all search engines will return all the words you type in, automatically.

The plus symbol: Now that you know how to eliminate search terms, here’s how you can add them in, using the “+” symbol. For example, if you have terms that must be returned in all your search results, you can place the plus symbol in front of the terms that you need to be included, such as:

• football+nfl

Your search results would now have both these terms included.

The minus symbol: Use the “-” symbol when you want a search engine to find pages that have one search word on them, but you need the search engine to exclude other words commonly associated with that search word. For example:

• Superman -Krypton

You are telling the search engines that you would like to find pages that only have the words “Superman”, but exclude the listings that include information about “Krypton”. This is a fast and easy way to eliminate extra information and narrow your search down; plus you can do a string of excluded words, like this: superman -krypton -“lex luthor”.

Each time a search engine lists a page of links to sources that it found for your query, it is called a search results page.

Major parts of the Search Results Page

• Search bar: near the top of the results page, where you can see your query and modify it or enter a new one.
• Ads: results appearing in the right-hand column, and sometimes at the top of the results in a colored box. These results appear because someone paid for them to be there and only appear if they are relevant to your search. They always are marked with the word “Ads,” so you can identify paid results.
• Natural results: These results are not paid for by anyone and cannot be bought. Google asks over 200 questions about how your query matches different pages it found on the web when deciding which pages to feature and in what order to list them. One reason search engines do not reveal more about how they rank is they don’t want people to be able to manipulate the system and get irrelevant or malicious pages highly ranked in the results.
• Filters: the subject of later lessons, these links in the top navigational menu, just below the search bar on the results page allows users to look specifically at results in one kind of media, or otherwise narrow the results.
• Knowledge Panel: When you search for an entity, such as a person, place, book, movie, character, animal, etc., Google may show a special informational box on the right-hand side of the screen.

 Main parts of an individual search result

• Title: In blue, the first line of a search result.
• Web address: In green, just under the title. This is the location of the page on the Web and can help you understand at a glance who is offering you the source, what kind of source it will be, and more.
• Snippet: The black text under the web address. This text is taken from the source to which the link points and gives an idea of how your search terms appear in the text. It is not a summary of what appears on the link, does not provide full information on a topic, and is not intended to do so. You should always click through to see your search terms (and the information they provide) in context.
• Bolded words: The words that appear darker on the screen are your search terms. In some cases, Google automatically finds synonyms for your search terms, so if you search for “kid,” you might see “child” bolded in your results.