Internet Explorer - Approaches to searching (2)

This is not a course. It is a...

Tip Sheet

(www.altavista.com) is a keyword search engine. Alta Vista 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 web site. 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.

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 laziness".   Alta Vista found 2 sites.