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Internet Searching Stategies


Contents


  1. Formulating a Strategy
  2. Types of Search Engine
  3. Narrowing Your Search Results
  4. Maximizing Your Search Results
  5. Evaluating Internet Resources
  6. Citing Internet Resources

Formulating a Strategy

  1. Decide if your topic is likely to be addressed on the Internet.You will find excellent Internet resources for:
    • Computers, engineering, physics
    • Natural sciences
    • Government information
    • Product/business information
    • Popular culture
    You will find less information (although this is rapidly changing) about:
    • Humanities (literature, history, philosophy, and the arts)
    • Social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology, education)
    Remember that the search engines cannot access the content of scholarly-reviewed and/or commercially-produced information in online versions of periodicals/journals and newspapers (Business Week, Science, Brain Research, etc.). To access this information, see the Fondren Library list of indices and databases (Rice only - more info about remote access)

  2. Decide on how current materials have to be to suit your needs.
    • Expect to find mostly current information on the Internet.
    • However, the expection is that information posted on the Internet will be updated frequently--often, it is not.
    • Expect to find some older materials, particularly materials whose copyright has expired (usually more than 75 years old).

  3. Spend a little time thinking about your search, getting at least a preliminary idea of what you hope to find. Think about key words (both specific and general) that might be helpful, and think about word variations. This list should include spelling variations between different cultures ("color" and "colour", for example) and synonyms ("shoe" and "footwear", for example).

  4. Choose a type of Internet resource that will reflect what you need. (More on that below.)

Types of Search Engine

  1. Subject directories are useful when you are conducting general research and want to find resources recommended by others

  2. Search engines are useful when you are looking for a particular web site, have a specific research question, or are looking for the most current information.

  3. Meta-search engines send your search to several search engines at once, then buid the results into a coherent research page

  4. Specialized search engines enable you to narrow your search to a specific topic and related websites. Search Engine Colossus (http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/) provides an extensive listing of available engines. Examples include:
    • Try Google Groups (groups.google.com) to search usenet groups.
    • To find an email address, search WhoWhere? (www.whowhere.com).

    For updates on search engines and their features, go to Search Engine Watch (searchenginewatch.com)

Narrowing Your Search

  1. Checking the sites the search engine returned will automatically narrow your search! Since many of the search engines do not regularly update their links, some of the sites they return will no longer be available.

  2. Almost all the search engines feature a link to an "advanced search," with instructions on how to combine or eliminate terms.

  3. Most of the search engines rank the occurrence of terms so that, if you type in "college scholarship", you will get the pages with the most matches on both of those terms first. Usually, you will see a percentage, indicating how closely the words on the page match your search terms.

  4. Some of the search engines use OR as a default. This means that you will get a list of sites that include one of any of the terms you used to search. If you search for "blue moon", you will get a list of sites for blue suede shoes, moon pies, etc.

  5. To retrieve sites with all the terms you have entered, try "AND" or "+". To eliminate terms, try "NOT" or "-". To search for a phrase, try "WITH" or put quotation marks around it (" "blue moon" ").

  6. Most of the search engines will ignore "and", "not", "with", and "adj" when typed in the lowercase.

  7. Use your most specific relevant subject terms. But think about the search engine your are using: if you are searching on www.allofmaine.com, you probably won't improve your search by adding "Maine" to your search for a vacation cottage.

Maximizing Your Search Results

  1. Search within site itself.
    • Many sites offer internal search engines, that is, search features that will look throughout a collection of web pages.

  2. Hack down the URL of a good site.
    • For instance, you can cut the /fondren/tmp/netguides/strategies.html off of this URL and get to the main Rice University page.

  3. Alter the URL.
    • Change http:// to gopher:// or ftp:// and you may discover text files or software at the site.

  4. Save your search.
    • If the address contains "cgi-bin", you should be able to bookmark it and return to it later.

  5. Vary your vocabulary.
      Try cyan, azure, or cornflower instead of blue.

  6. Vary your spelling.
      The Internet is a global network, so, to search on the word "color", try "color and colour", and maybe even "Farbe" or "couleur".

  7. To translate a web page from one language to another, try Alta Vista Translation Service (http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate?).

  8. Truncate your words, usually with a " * " (for instance, "color*" will turn up "coloring", "colors", "colorized"). Be careful, however, on how you truncate because you might also retrieve "coloratura" and other unrelated terms.

Evaluating Internet Resources

  1. Look at the URL to determine what type of organization produced the site.
    • .com is a commercial site.
    • .edu is an academic site.
    • .gov is a government site.
    • .org is usually a non-profit organization.
    • .net is a networked service provider.
    • .mil is a military site.
    Country/Region-Specific Domain names:
    • A list of various domains such as .uk (United Kingdom) and .de (Germany) are available from NORID (http://www.uninett.no/navn/domreg.html)
      Remember that a page's country/region of origin does not imply that the page is about that country/region or that it is written in the native language(s) of that country/region.
  2. Look at the URL to determine who produced the site (or who posted it, at least).
    • ~name is usually someone's name, or part of their name.
    • You can try to look them up by partial name and institution in WhoWhere? (www.whowhere.com).
  3. Consider the following questions.
    • Is an author listed?
    • What are the credentials of the author?
    • Is there a bias or a commercial interest?
    • Who is the intended audience of the page?
    • How current is the information?
    • Are references, citations, or links to other resources included?
    Remember that the search engines cannot access the content of scholarly-reviewed and/or commercially-produced, reputable information in online versions of periodicals/journals and newspapers (Business Week, Science, Brain Research, etc.). To access this information, see the Fondren Library list of indices and databases (Rice only).

Citing Internet Resources

  1. List the author's name, if it is given.
  2. List the title of the page.
  3. List the URL.
  4. Indicate the date you visited the page (Web pages often do not list the date they were created or updated, so this is a way of indicating how current the information may be).
  5. For more specific information, refer to online style guides for citing electronic sources.

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