| Before you search | Natural language search - AskJeeves | |
| Basic tips for keyword searching | Keyword search - Bing | |
| Specialised searches | Multiple-search - Dogpile |
Bing
(http://www.bing.com) is a keyword search engine. Bing searches through all the text of all the documents it finds. As a result it could find thousands of documents if you do not carefully select the keywords. Before you use a search engine like this you should read and practice the basic tips for keyword searching and advice on what to do before you begin, given on this CD. More advanced tips are also given to you at the Findspot website.
In the example below we have typed in just one word as a keyword. It is not a good idea to do this unless it is a very unique word.
You will notice that Bing found over 13 600 000 search results or web pages on the Internet that have the word "mushrooms".
However, if you choose a unique keyword such as a phrase that is not likely to be found in many documents other than the one you are looking for you are more likely to get a search result that only points to a few documents. Ideally you want the search result to give you about 20 or fewer documents to look at. In the example below, we searched on "merits of procrastination". Bing found 10 sites.
What you need to practice perfecting a search technique is to
-
find unique words
-
combine words that define the topic more narrow
-
use phrases that are likely to appear in the document
Recommended resources:
Tips for searching with keywords
An activity on identifying effective keywords techniques
( http://www.dogpile.com) - A Multiple Search Engine
A multiple or meta-search engine is one that searches other search engines. Dogpile is one example of such a site. It is worth trying a keyword search on this site to see how the results differ. It may find search engines that give you good results.
For example, we searched on mushrooms (try this yourself with other keywords as well). Dogpile also has an information index that searches multiple search engines.
The result of the search is that Dogpile has looked at about 20 different search engines and you are likely to find interesting documents to suit your needs. However, you will need time to look through all the options.
