Finding information on the Internet can be frustrating. The web is hyped up as the biggest information repository the world has ever known. If there’s a subject you want to find more about, we’re told, there has to be something about it on the ‘net. According to the most recent GVU Web user survey, over 69% of internet users go online to find specific information most of the time, and over 99% of us are looking for something specific at least some of the time.

Once we get on, though, how do we get to this promised treasure trove of information? Over 75% of respondents to that same survey said that the difficulty of finding web sites rates among the biggest problems of the internet today. Relevant information can be scattered across dozens, or even hundreds of web sites all around the world. If you can’t find the stuff you’re looking for, or if it takes too much time to find it, what’s it all really worth?

The tips and web sites collected here have been specifically chosen to help maximize your time online. You may notice that a number of popular search sites have not been included. We’ve selected only what we consider to be the best and included a few new resources you might not be familiar with.

Using these strategies and online tools will help you find relevant information quickly and easily. You can use our recommendations as a starting point in determining which search techniques and online sites are best for the way you like to work.

Please note that search terms that would be entered into web sites are enclosed in brackets throughout this booklet, [like this].

Investing a little time to prepare for searching online can help bring focus and clarity to your efforts. Quality results are easier to come by through basic preparation, and the time it takes to find results can be reduced dramatically. Here are some tips to help you prepare.

Have a clear idea of the information you would like to find. What would the ideal result look like? Are you looking for general background information, or a specific fact?

With all of the online enticements that are just a mouse click away, it’s easy to get off track. Check to see if you’re sticking to your objective every once in a while to help stay on-course.

Keywords are individual words entered into a search engine that relate to the subject you’re looking for, while phrases are short groups of words. The keywords and phrases entered become your search query.

Search engines and directories look at how closely the content of their entries matches your keywords and phrases. What words would the author of a web page use? What you may call "accounting" might be called "bookkeeping" or "financial management" by others.

Even if you’re looking for specific information, try starting out with a more general search. That way you won’t miss out on other related web sites that may be of interest, and you’ll catch more sites that are direct hits, but didn’t use the specific terms you were considering. Be careful, though. It’s easy to get carried away with lots of specific keywords, which can often end up with no results at all. Refine your search as you go along to fine-tune your results.

Often typing in a few basic words as a query results in hundreds of thousands of returned pages. Adding a few, precise keywords can dramatically reduce the playing field. For example, searching for [bread] would be practically useless. Even searching for [rye bread] might give too many results. Choosing [rye bread machine recipe] considerably narrows your return. Again, be careful not to be too precise, as you might end up with no results at all.

Most search engines ignore words like "a", "the", "that", "are", etc. Try to avoid using them in your queries. Also, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives often dilute results unless they directly modify a specific noun in your search. Use short phrases surrounded by quotes to find exact matches more easily.

As you become familiar with the search engines, directories, and specialty sites that are available, you’ll find that some are better suited to certain types of searches than others. For example, Yahoo! Is excellent for basic, well-known, or established web sites, but is not as comprehensive or current as AltaVista, Google, or HotBot.

A thesaurus can be a great tool to help in your online searching. By using synonyms, you can expand the selection that’s returned by various sites and you are more likely to find high-quality, relevant web pages. Misspellings and alternate spellings should also be considered. For example, pages from the United Kingdom will use "colour" and "organise" instead of "color" and "organize".

Before crunch time arrives and you have little time to get results, invest some time to become familiar with the resources that are available. Getting to know how they work and the types of results they produce when there’s no pressure will enable you to use them quickly and effectively when you need to get access to good information as quickly as possible.

You’ve prepared for your search. You have your keywords and phrases ready, and have selected the sites you’d like to use to find the information. These ten tips can help you make the most of your time searching online.

Each search engine has a different way of taking the information in your query to find results in it’s database. Knowing the search rules of the site you’re using is essential to avoid wasting time. Some search engines imply that you want any of the keywords you provide, while others automatically assume that you require all of them to be present. Some allow you to use the power of Boolean operators, and some don’t. Some automatically use truncation, some don’t. Knowing the differences can prevent frustration and provide better results.

Most search engines give more consideration to the first word(s) in your query than they do to the later ones. They use the order of the words to determine relevance while matching up your query with the pages in their database.

Described in the next section, search modifiers can help narrow down your results, and are among the most powerful tools available to find exactly what you want. Be sure to use them whenever possible. Almost all search engines and directories allow their use, while some don’t allow the more powerful Boolean operators.

Boolean Operators, described in the next section, allow you to construct queries that let search engines know exactly what you will and will not accept in their results. Using Boolean logic, complex sets of criteria can be used, including parentheses to further specify the results you’re looking for. Some search engines do not allow Boolean operators, and some only allow their use on their Advanced Search pages. If this tool is available, it is the single most powerful means of searching the Internet.

If you find that there’s an advanced search page available on the search engine or directory you’re using, you’ll discover that it gives you many more opportunities to refine your search criteria. In some cases, Boolean operators are only allowed by using the advanced pages. Other features are also usually included that are not available on the general search page.

Even if the first page of results that the search site returns to you seems to contain good stuff, go a little deeper into the results to see what’s there. Often more web pages, of better quality, are lurking just beyond that first results page.

If you’ve found a good page, take the time to look around at the other things available on the site. Chances are, if it’s a good page, the rest of the site will be of a similar high-quality, and present you with more information and resources.

Many great web sites take the time to include a collection of recommended links that relate to their topic. These links are a great way to find more information, as they have been hand-picked by the authors.

Make extensive use of the Bookmarking feature of your browser (Internet Explorer calls them Favorites). If you’ve performed a search that brought you great results, bookmark the search page to refer to it in the future. As more sites are added to the search engine directory, and some pages are removed, your results can change over time. Also, be sure to bookmark any great pages that you find. In time, you’ll have a collection of links which you’ve selected yourself that you can draw on as a resource instantly.

As you use these resources to search on the Internet, remember what techniques and tools worked best for you. Your online searching expertise will grow, and your effectiveness will increase.

Boolean logic allows you to fine-tune your searches by telling the search engine what must be included in your results, and/or what must not be included. Complex queries, similar to algebraic equations, can be constructed for further search refinement. Be sure to capitalize all operators. Here are the most common ones:

Complex Searches

Combining the above functions can help you further refine your queries. Parentheses can be used to group objects together, similar to a simple algebraic equation.

For example, [(herbal OR holistic) AND medicine AND (chinese OR asian) NOT (cold OR flu)] would return herbal or holistic Eastern medicine pages that are not about colds or flu. As you can see, you can construct quite detailed criteria with this powerful feature.

When using a few simple keywords isn’t enough, there are a number of additional search tools that can be used in addition to Boolean operators to refine your results. Some of them operate just like AND or NOT, but are easier to use and are available without having to access advanced options. Check the specific functions of your chosen search site to see which of these modifiers are available.

Case-Sensitivity. Although case sensitivity rules vary a bit among search sites, generally any lowercase-only keyword will find matches that contain any combination of capital and lowercase letters. Words entered with capital letters are searched for exactly as they are entered. The keyword "enterprise" will therefore find significantly different pages than "Enterprise".

Using Quotes. Use quotes to restrict queries to specific phrases. A search for ["herbal medicine"] will only find pages that include the two words in that specific order.

Truncation and Default Parameters. Some search sites automatically truncate keywords, i.e., they put a wildcard (see "*" above) after the end of each search term in your query. This helps to find plurals of the nouns you’re searching for. Also, some search engines automatically assume that you want to include all keywords in your results, while some assume that you want any keywords in your results. Keep this in mind if you don’t get what you expected.

A Search Engine web site uses a computer program to automatically scour the Internet for web pages, keeping track of the text they contain. They include an interface to look up entries in their database based upon keywords and phrases you provide. A Directory is a hierarchical group of web pages, usually assembled by humans, that catalogs and categorizes web pages based on their subjects. As a result, search engines usually have more pages in their database and contain more current information, while directories contain fewer entries that have been hand-picked, and are therefore usually higher in quality and relevance.

Each search engine and directory goes about collecting web sites in a different way. That’s why using the exact same query in one site will result in different results on other search sites. Also, new pages are always being added, and others are being removed, so the results on one day may be different than the results you’d get just a few weeks later.

While there are general similarities in the ways these sites process queries, each one has different quirks and capabilities that should be kept in mind. Also, some sites are better for certain types of searches than others.

As you become familiar with each of them, you’ll begin to develop an expertise at determining how to get the best results from each site, and you’ll know which sites are more likely to return high-quality pages for the particular search you have in mind.

http://www.yahoo.com/

Yahoo is the most popular search site on the Internet today. Although it contains relatively few sites in its database, they are all hand-picked by human beings and are therefore often more relevant than the pages returned by the other sites. If you haven’t found what you’re looking for, there are also links included on the bottom of each search page that allow you to use your query at other popular sites, including AltaVista, HotBot, and NorthernLight.

Benefits: Easy to use, subject browsing available, high-quality sites, many additional features, includes image surfer to find pictures, ability to move search query to other search engines on result pages.

Drawbacks: Smaller database, older pages, unable to use Boolean operators in search, only common subjects included.

Best For: General subjects

Starting off your search session

http://www.altavista.com/

AltaVista contains one of the most current and extensive web site databases available on the Internet. It allows many powerful search modifiers and Boolean searching. You can also search and translate in different languages. A separate directory is included for subject-based browsing.

Benefits: Huge database, fast return of results, multiple languages and translation features, ability to search for keywords in page titles and other page data, media search feature, includes AskJeeves technology for real-question input, Usenet searching.

Drawbacks: Can be difficult to use, often too many results are returned, doesn’t rank relevant sites well.

Best For: Current sites

Detailed queries

Finding Multimedia (pictures, sounds, video)

http://www.hotbot.com/

HotBot is a favorite among hardcore Internet searchers. It’s big. It’s fast. It’s easy to refine searches and enter detailed criteria. It also includes the Open Directory, which is larger in size but otherwise similar to the Yahoo! Directory, with the addition of descriptions for each page. Indeed, there’s very little room for improvement on this search engine.

Benefits: Big database, fast result returns, good ranking of results, easy to refine search criteria, complex search functions included (including time-sensitive searches), Boolean queries directly supported, includes the Open Directory.

Drawbacks: Can take a little while to get the hang of it.

Best For: Highly-relevant ranking of results

Extremely complex searches

Quick results using detailed criteria

http://www.northernlight.com/

If you take one of the most comprehensive Internet search engines, then add your own collection of news articles and related information to the search, plus organize results on-the-fly in subject folders, you end up with Northern Light. Their Special Collection will return results that you won’t be able to find on any of the other search sites. Searching is free, as are Internet results, but expect to pay $1-$4 each to access articles from their Special Collection.

Benefits: Big, fast, easy to use, relevancy ranking by percentage, custom content unavailable elsewhere, on-the-fly categorization into subject folders.

Drawbacks: Finding the perfect article in their Special Collection, and needing to pay for it.

Best For: Most searches

http://www.google.com/

Using Google is simplicity itself. There are no flashy graphics, no enticing banner ads, just a search box and a logo. Google is unique in the way it ranks the relevancy of pages that match your search criteria. It gives greater weight to pages that have a larger number of other web pages linking to it. Lots of pages that link to a particular web site usually mean that the site is particularly useful or contains valuable information. This type of popularity-contest ranking helps Google give results that are better than most other search engines. Note that Google does not use automatic truncation, which means that a search for "hotel" will not include pages that only contain "hotels". Google searches are also not case-sensitive, and no wildcards are supported.

Benefits: Large database, easy interface, extremely relevant results, cached page contents in case site is unavailable.

Drawbacks: No detailed search functions, no OR searching available, obscure web sites won’t rank.

Best For: Quick searching

http://www.ask.com/

Complicated Boolean operators and detailed search criteria can be great, but often all that’s needed is an answer to a simple question. The genius of Ask Jeeves lies in the ability to type natural-language questions into the search box. The site uses sophisticated computer programming to try and figure out what you’re looking for, then gives you the answers. For a quick answer to a specific question, this is place to go. Ask Jeeves also breaks down your question into keywords and sends it off to other search engines, whose results are included in your returned page.

Benefits: Natural language question input

Drawbacks: No advanced search functions or Boolean operators, unknown database source

Best For: Quick answers to specific questions

http://www.hubat.com/

Hubat is still in beta, which means that it’s not quite ready for the general public. Nonetheless, those who know about it feel that it’s one of the most innovative ways to catalog and search the Internet, and that in time it will become one of the dominant destinations for online searching and research. It has begun using a computer to build a database of web sites, just like other search engines, but then goes an extra step. It uses artificial intelligence technology to determine the subject of the page, and assembles an uncannily-accurate description. When it gets up to speed, it should offer the best of the computer-complied search engines coupled with the ease-of-use of the best human-chosen web site directories.

Benefits: Up-to-date listings, extremely relevant results, automatic subject-based directory, accurate page descriptions

Drawbacks: No advanced search functions or Boolean operators, only ten results per page, is still in beta and so it lacks complete functionality

Best For: General searching

http://www.britannica.com/

The entire text of the Encyclopedia Brittanica is now available, free of charge, online. It’s completely indexed for easy searching, and search results include selected news articles from over 70 magazines, over 125,000 recommended web sites, and a comprehensive bibliography of related books. For professionally written information on hundreds of topics, there are no sites on the Internet that match the quality and scope of britannica.com.

http://www.refdesk.com/

They bill themselves as "the single best source for facts on the Net," and they are probably right. Directly from their home page you can search using Google, check out definitions from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, plus have quick access to search boxes for Britannica.com, Roget’s Thesaurus, Reuters/AP Headlines, Current Weather, Stock Quotes, and a Local City Guide.

Lots of links are included to reference sites across the web.

An encyclopedia is provided for in-depth research, as are daily news and information sites, a Facts Index, Desktop Resources, and Editor’s Picks.

Although it can be a bit overwhelming navigating around the site at first, after a short while it can become a powerful ally in the search for information online.

http://www.libraryspot.com/

LibrarySpot sports a clean, uncluttered look and provides direct access to library and reference sites on the Internet. Although there aren’t many links, each one has been chosen for quality and usefulness. This means that there isn’t a blizzard of information pouring out at you so you can focus on the sites you like best without any distractions.

http://www.elibrary.com/

For $9.95 per month or $59.95 per year, you can use the Electric Library to search for and access an incredible amount of articles and information pulled from hundreds of publications worldwide. Their database includes every article from more than 150 newspapers, hundreds of magazines, national and international news wires, 2,000 complete works of literature, over 28,000 photos, images and maps, reference works, and more.

The content contained in their database often cannot be found elsewhere online. If you find yourself needing frequent access to a broad range of subject materials, consider using the massive database of the Electric Library. If you don’t need regular access to such research, consider using the Northern Light or Newstrawler services, which have a pay-per-use structure instead of monthly or yearly subscriptions.

They offer a 30-day free trial, so you can test them out to see if what they have to offer meets your needs.

http://www.about.com/

About.com takes a unique approach to organizing information about web sites. They have expert guides, familiar with over 700 targeted topics, choose and describe their favorite online destinations. This personal touch adds quality and provides a more comfortable experience while searching. While the quantity of sites included is quite low as compared to other search services, the added value of personal evaluation and commentary adds quite a bit.

The Eatonweb Blog Directory

http://www.eatonweb.com/portal/

Wouldn’t it be great if your friend who knows all about, for instance, computers, kept a list of the best internet sites he’d visited each week? Weblogs, called blogs for short, are maintained by groups and individuals who chronicle and describe web sites they’ve found to be interesting. Depending on the interest(s) of the author(s), the topic range of described sites can vary from wildly eclectic to rigidly specific. Again, having a real person recommend a web site can be a great way to wade through the lousy sites and get to the good stuff.

http://www.theultimates.com/

There are lots of sites online that let you search for individual and business phone numbers, mailing addresses, and email addresses. The Ultimates provide one form that submits your information to nearly all of them. This is the place to go when you want to find contact information for people or companies.

http://www.deja.com/usenet/

Usenet is a continuing online discussion involving thousands of people writing about hundreds of topics ranging from the mundane to the esoteric. It’s constantly being added to and expanded, and includes commentary by some of the best minds on the Internet both today and yesterday. Deja allows you to search archives of Usenet discussions, and also provides feedback and ratings on various merchandise.

http://www.liszt.com/

Email mailing lists have been around since 1975. They feature ongoing discussions, similar to Usenet, that are delivered to your email account. There are over 90,000 mailing lists that can be found on Liszt, so the chances are great that any topic you may be interested in has a mailing list dedicated to it. They provide information on how to sign up and get started with the mailing list of your choice.

http://www.download.com/

Download.com is one of the best places to find software on the Internet. Both freeware, shareware, and commercial software are included, and detailed searches can be performed.

http://www.newstrawler.com/

This site collects information from hundreds of news archives across the web. Searching is free, although some of the results may require payment for access.

http://www.purefiction.com/pages/res1.htm/

The Internet Search FAQ (FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions) is a perfect place to find out more about searching online. In addition to explanations and searching tips, many links to other sites are provided so that you can begin exploring other sites dedicated to searching online.

http://www.searchenginewatch.com/

Existing search engines are changing continually, both in the contents of their databases and in the way they search the web. In addition, new tools are being put online on a regular basis. To keep up with this flurry of activity, check in with Search Engine Watch regularly. They feature a monthly Search Engine Report that discusses recent changes to the industry, and their site includes detailed reviews, ratings, tests, and tips.

http://www.searchIQ.com/

Geared toward regular Internet users, this site is similar to Search Engine Watch, but has a less technical focus. In addition to reviews and link guides, they have a great Search Engine Directory that lets you find search engines based on a variety of topics.

http://www.traffick.com/

Many search engines and directories offer much more than just a searchable database of web sites. They’d like to become your first stop, or portal, when you go online by offering added features and capabilities. These features can include free email accounts, voicemail, custom stock portfolios and news items, web-based bookmarks, calendars, and address books. Traffick keeps track of the portals, can let you know what’s out there, and what other people think of the different choices available.

The biggest problem with buying a book about online searching is that by the time it’s published, it’s highly likely that the playing field has changed considerably. Still, there are good books available that stick to the fundamentals and provide a tremendous resource. Here are three of the best.

By Michael Miller
425 Pages

This book is the most comprehensive collection of search sites, suggestions, and researching information currently available. The most recent edition (as of this writing) was published in August of 1999, which is old by Internet standards, but fresher than most other books on the subject. It provides an in-depth look at the major search engines, along with specialized sites that will help you find everything from a new home to on-sale merchandise. A handy reference card is included for quick referral.

By Robert S. Want
75 Pages

How to Search the Web provides a basic overview of each of the major search engines, along with a quick primer on using Boolean operators and other search tips. It’s particularly handy because it comes bound in a spiral binder, which lets it lay flat for easy reference. Be sure to get the 3rd Edition, which was published in February of 2000.

By Randolph Hock and Paula Berinstein

240 Pages

Written for professional researchers, students, businesses and libraries, this book focuses on how search engines work to bring you their results. It’s the oldest of these three, being published in June of 1999, however it offers a valuable approach to searching.

Explosivo Internet Technologies Group is a full-service web development and technology consulting company out of Avon, Connecticut. Services include web site design and updating, web presence development, multimedia design, consulting services, and web hosting.

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