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Internet Explorer - Searching for information

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

Tip Sheet


What is a search engine?

Web search engines like Alta Vista and Yahoo continually search the Internet for new documents and add them to their database. The Web is a very large information resource consisting of millions and millions of documents, but many of these documents contain information which you do not want e.g.

  • material written by 10 years olds (not much detail)
  • material written by people who do not know what they are talking about (inaccurate)
  • advertisements (not wanted)
  • personal home pages (boring!)
  • academic research papers (may be too detailed and obscure)

We recommend the module on Finding and using information on this CD if you want to develop your information finding skills.

Basic tips for searching

These tips apply to keyword searches conducted on AltaVista and Yahoo. There are other tips that could also be used but we are concentrating on the essential, basic search skills here. Different search engines use slightly different search techniques. For more tips on a greater variety of search engines, we recommend the Findspot search site.

Tip 1 - Always use + and sometimes a  -
if you want the word to appear in the document, add a +
if you do not want the word in the document, add a -

e.g.  This is the way that you would write the search keywords in the search box on the search engine web site: (notice the space after each word)

+Mandela +marriage +Graca -Winnie
 

Tip 2 - If there is more than one word in the phrase, use "quotation marks"

This applies if the words for which you are searching are

  • a quotation from a document (e.g. "I have a dream")
  • a proper name of a person, song or place etc (e.g. Trott Moloto and Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika)
  • several words, but one idea (e.g. culture of learning, or Bill of Rights)

e.g. (sub-tip: use capitals if the words are proper names)

+"Nelson Mandela" +"Graca Machel" -"Winnie Mandela"
+"outcomes-based education" +"South Africa" -Australia -"United States"