Tuesday, February 9, 2010
PHRASE SEARCHING
Surrounding a group of words with double quotes tells the search engine to only retrieve documents in which those words appear side-by-side. Phrase searching is a powerful search technique for significantly narrowing your search results, and it should be used as often as possible.
+"heart disease" +cause
The above example tells the search engine to retrieve pages where the words heart disease appear side-by-side and the word cause appears somewhere else on the page.
NOTE ON IMPLIED BOOLEAN LOGIC (+/-): When a phrase search is combined with additional keywords using implied Boolean logic (+/-), you must put a plus or minus sign before the phrase as well as the other keywords. If the search involves a phrase with no additional keywords (e.g., "Walt Disney World"), the plus sign before the quotes is optional.
PLURAL FORMS, CAPITAL LETTERS, AND ALTERNATE SPELLINGS
Most search engines interpret lower case letters as either upper or lower case. Thus, if you want both upper and lower case occurrences returned, type your keywords in all lower case letters. However, if you want to limit your results to initial capital letters (e.g., "George Washington") or all upper case letters, type your keywords that way.
Like capitalization, most search engines interpret singular keywords as singular or plural. If you want plural forms only, make your keywords plural.
A few search engines support truncation or wildcard features that allow variations in spelling or word forms. The asterisk (*) symbol tells the search engine to return alternate spellings for a word at the point that the asterisk appears. For example, capital* returns web pages with capital, capitals, capitalize, and capitalization.
TITLE SEARCH
Field searching is one of the most effective techniques for narrowing results and getting the most relevant websites listed at the top of the results page. A web page is composed of a number of fields, such as title, domain, host, URL, and link. Searching effectiveness increases as you combine field searches with phrase searches and Boolean logic. For example, if you wanted to find information about George Washington and his wife Martha, you could try the following search:
The above TITLE SEARCH example instructs the search engine to return web pages where the phrase George Washington appears in the title and the words President and Martha appear somewhere on the page. Like plus and minus, there is no space between the colon (:) and the keyword.
DOMAIN SEARCH
In addition to the title search, other helpful field searching strategies include the domain search, the host search, the link search, and the URL search. The DOMAIN SEARCH allows you to limit results to certain domains such as websites from Malaysia (.my), educational institutions (.edu), or government sites (.gov).
Most of the web. domains are the following:
.com = a commercial business
.edu = an educational institution
.gov = a governmental institution
.org = a non-profit organization
.mil = a military site
.net = a network site
Most websites originating outside the U.S. have a country domain indicating the country of origin. Example :
.cn China
.id Indonesia
.mx Mexico
.my Malaysia
.uk United Kingdom
.um United States Minor Outlying Islands
.us United States
HOST SEARCH
The HOST SEARCH comes in handy when you need to find something located at a large site that does not have an internal search engine. With this search technique, you can search all the pages at a website (contained in the engine's database) for keywords or phrases of interest.
NOTE: Because the major search engines do not always log an entire website, use an internal search engine, if the website has one, for best results.
URL SEARCH
The URL SEARCH limits search results to web pages where the keyword appears in the URL or website address. A URL search can narrow very broad results to web pages devoted to the keyword topic.
LINK SEARCH
Use the LINK SEARCH when you want to know what websites are linked to a particular site of interest. For example, if you have a home page and you are wondering if anyone has put a link to your page on their website, use the Link search. Researchers use link searches for conducting backward citations.
Surrounding a group of words with double quotes tells the search engine to only retrieve documents in which those words appear side-by-side. Phrase searching is a powerful search technique for significantly narrowing your search results, and it should be used as often as possible.
"Tun Mahathir"
"Walt Disney World"
"global warming"
For best results, combine phrase searching with implied Boolean (+/-) or full Boolean (AND, OR, and AND NOT) logic.
+"heart disease" +cause
"heart disease" and cause
The above example tells the search engine to retrieve pages where the words heart disease appear side-by-side and the word cause appears somewhere else on the page.
NOTE ON IMPLIED BOOLEAN LOGIC (+/-): When a phrase search is combined with additional keywords using implied Boolean logic (+/-), you must put a plus or minus sign before the phrase as well as the other keywords. If the search involves a phrase with no additional keywords (e.g., "Walt Disney World"), the plus sign before the quotes is optional.
PLURAL FORMS, CAPITAL LETTERS, AND ALTERNATE SPELLINGS
Most search engines interpret lower case letters as either upper or lower case. Thus, if you want both upper and lower case occurrences returned, type your keywords in all lower case letters. However, if you want to limit your results to initial capital letters (e.g., "George Washington") or all upper case letters, type your keywords that way.
Like capitalization, most search engines interpret singular keywords as singular or plural. If you want plural forms only, make your keywords plural.
A few search engines support truncation or wildcard features that allow variations in spelling or word forms. The asterisk (*) symbol tells the search engine to return alternate spellings for a word at the point that the asterisk appears. For example, capital* returns web pages with capital, capitals, capitalize, and capitalization.
TITLE SEARCH
Field searching is one of the most effective techniques for narrowing results and getting the most relevant websites listed at the top of the results page. A web page is composed of a number of fields, such as title, domain, host, URL, and link. Searching effectiveness increases as you combine field searches with phrase searches and Boolean logic. For example, if you wanted to find information about George Washington and his wife Martha, you could try the following search:
+title:"George Washington" +President +Martha
title:"George Washington" and President and Martha
title:"George Washington" and President and Martha
The above TITLE SEARCH example instructs the search engine to return web pages where the phrase George Washington appears in the title and the words President and Martha appear somewhere on the page. Like plus and minus, there is no space between the colon (:) and the keyword.
DOMAIN SEARCH
In addition to the title search, other helpful field searching strategies include the domain search, the host search, the link search, and the URL search. The DOMAIN SEARCH allows you to limit results to certain domains such as websites from Malaysia (.my), educational institutions (.edu), or government sites (.gov).
+domain:my +title:"Tun Mahathir"
domain:my and title:"Tun Mahathir"
+domain:edu +"ijazah sarjana muda" +kejuruteraan*
domain:edu and "ijazah sarjana muda" and kejuruteraan*
Most of the web. domains are the following:
.com = a commercial business
.edu = an educational institution
.gov = a governmental institution
.org = a non-profit organization
.mil = a military site
.net = a network site
Most websites originating outside the U.S. have a country domain indicating the country of origin. Example :
.cn China
.id Indonesia
.mx Mexico
.my Malaysia
.uk United Kingdom
.um United States Minor Outlying Islands
.us United States
HOST SEARCH
The HOST SEARCH comes in handy when you need to find something located at a large site that does not have an internal search engine. With this search technique, you can search all the pages at a website (contained in the engine's database) for keywords or phrases of interest.
NOTE: Because the major search engines do not always log an entire website, use an internal search engine, if the website has one, for best results.
+host:www.disney.com +"special offer"
host:www.disney.com and "special offer"
URL SEARCH
The URL SEARCH limits search results to web pages where the keyword appears in the URL or website address. A URL search can narrow very broad results to web pages devoted to the keyword topic.
+url:malaysia +title:melancong
url:malaysia and title:melancong
LINK SEARCH
Use the LINK SEARCH when you want to know what websites are linked to a particular site of interest. For example, if you have a home page and you are wondering if anyone has put a link to your page on their website, use the Link search. Researchers use link searches for conducting backward citations.
link:www.pepsi.com
link:www.ipl.org/ref/
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