Searching the Web

Searching the Web for information

Read how search engines send crawlers or know-bots out on the web to find and index the web.

Search Techniques:
1. Use a variety of search engines. Different engines search different areas of the web. Try:
        Google Try Google's experimental site: Google Labs
        Yahoo
        AltaVista
        AskJeeves
    Some search engines like Metacrawler and Dogpile are meta-search engines that search other search engines.
    If you are looking for peer-reviewed scientific journals, which generally are the most credible, try Google Scholar, and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (including Pub Med), and the UVM Library online Data Bases.

2. Put search keywords in quotes to make search more specific. For example, "zebra mussel in lake champlain" reduced the number of pages found to 26, from close to 1000 without quotes using AltaVista search engine (Jan 2003). Take the time to read the how-to info on advanced and refined searches for each search engine.

3. Many search engines give you the option of searching just for images or video or mp3 audio files.

4. If you are looking for statistics or data, put these words into the keyword search. For example "Organic farm statistics" or "Greenhouse warming data".

5. Use PCWebopedia.com to look up information technology acronyms such as TCP/IP, ADSL, DHCP, ISDN, or DNS.

6. Visit Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com if you are looking for a book, then check out the UVM Library to see if we have it.

7. Try the advanced searches with boolean operators such as AND, OR, NOT.

8. Be critical about the credibility of web sites you find. Most web sites do not go through the rigorous peer review process of published works. Ask yourself: Who is the author? Is the author credible? Has the author published material in peer reviewed journals? Can I get these same data from other sources? Is there an email address where I can ask for more information? Is the web page dated so I know when the information was put on line? Does the information make sense? Is it convincing? Do you detect any bias in the information?