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Searches on the Web (screen 6 of 20)
Searching tips
When you look for information you might go to a search engine like 
Google(1), AltaVista(2) or a directory like Yahoo!(3).
Search engines
When you use a search engine the engine will provide you with a search box into which you type your search text or search string. So, for example, you might visit our Australian cultural search engine(4) looking for information on Ned Kelly.
If so, you would type the search string 'Ned Kelly' into the search box. The search engine would search its index for any occurrences of the string 'Ned Kelly' and return them to you on a 'results' page with the closest matches appearing first.
If you use AltaVista to search for Ned Kelly you will need to type "Ned Kelly" (with the double quotes!). This means that the AltaVista search engine will look for instances of Ned and Kelly together. If you type + Ned + Kelly, AltaVista will return a list of links to pages that contain the word Ned and the word Kelly, but not necessarily together.
Different search engines work in different ways so to make your searches more effective it's a good idea to read the 'Help' files provided by the search engine you are using.
It also helps if you understand how the index you're searching has been assembled. For example, some search engines are specific to Australian sites. Furthermore, any search engine can usually only search for information which has been retrieved by robots (see below) from other websites.
To find out more about search engines, and for links to search engines, read Guide 3 screen 5(5) or visit 'A Consumer's Guide to Search Engines'(6).
Spiders and robots
Search engines find and index websites largely by using 'spiders' or 'robots'. The spiders roam the Web ceaselessly, finding and cataloguing new websites and new Web screens. So the indexing of search engine content tends to be automated. This means that your search results, like those from any search of an index, are only as good as the index itself, and the quality of the items indexed.
Directories
Directories list information by category and many directories' listings are checked, and/or evaluated, for listing by humans. You can search across a whole directory, but if you are looking for particular information then looking in a category - like Arts and Humanities - can often be a useful place to start. The best known Web directory is Yahoo!.
Search results
So what happens after you do a search?
Usually you are presented with a Web screen with a list of links to websites which contain your search string. These links are called 'hits'. At the bottom of the screen you will usually find a row of numbers indicating that a further given number of screens are similarly filled with links to sites which contain your search string.
You may find you have 20 or 30 thousand successful hits returned on your search string. To reduce the number of hits increase the number of search terms you use.
Search results are usually presented in order, with the best matches presented first.
The power that you have in conducting such a search is enormous. It is like being able to find pages in books in libraries, rather than just one book in one library.
Search services for your website
It is a good idea to provide your users with a way of searching your website for specific information. The Australian Culture and Recreation Portal provides such a search facility(7), free, to websites we index. All you need to do is copy some code and insert it into your website.
You can also provide an option where users can search the Australian Culture and Recreation Portal index from your website!
Yahoo!(8) also offers a free search facility so that your website's users can search the Yahoo! directory from your website. As does Dogpile(9). You need to think about what sorts of information users of your site are most interested in and select the most appropriate search engine for your site.
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References
- Google http://www.google.com/
- AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/
- Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/
- The Australian Culture and Recreation search engine
http://culture.gov.au/ - Guide 3 screen 5 http://culture.gov.au/resources/guides/g3/s5.htm
- A Consumer's Guide to Search Engines http://www.imaginarylandscape.com/helpweb/www/seek.html
- The Australian Culture and Recreation Portal free cultural search engines
http://culture.gov.au/freesearch/ - Yahoo! search http://au.cgi.yahoo.com/bin/yahootogo-search
- Dogpile search http://www.dogpile.com/add2home.html
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