SEARCHING THE INTERNET

Marty Levy

B.S.E.E.

If you haven't been living under a rock, you've probably heard the phrase "surfing the internet" by now. But there is another phrase you have probably not heard-"searching the internet". The reason is due to the nature of the internet. The internet is deliberately not organized in an orderly fashion, has no central authority that puts things in their "proper" place, and can be changed at will by the users. This lack of a system is virtually the opposite of something like the Dewey Decimal system, which organizes books by author, subject and title, making it relatively easy to locate reference books in a library.

Although searching the internet can be difficult and time consuming, it can also be very useful. Through the internet a vast amount of information can be available to you in your home or office, if only you can find it. In addition, some things are available only on the internet, such as many freeware or shareware computer programs. There is also often a side benefit of finding information you didn't know you wanted while in the act of searching for something else on the net.

Some of the best things to find on the internet can be information that is not easily accessible in any other way. Recently, my sister-in-law was planning a trip to Hawaii. She wanted to find a bed and breakfast inn which was affordably priced but had a good view of the ocean. Using the www, she was able to find web sites that not only gave the pertinent information, but which also included photos of the inn's interior and the view!

Internet search techniques can vary somewhat depending upon the information for which you are looking. There are a few techniques which are pretty standard, though.

Search Engines

Searching the internet is typically done via "search engines" on the world-wide web. These are www pages that can be accessed via your web browser that allow you to enter information about your search; they will then return likely places to look ("hits") based on your criteria. Here's a list of the more popular search engines for you to bookmark with your browser:

http://www.yahoo.com

http://www.excite.com

http://www.lycos.com

http://www.mckinley.com

http://www.opentext.com

http://altavista.digital.com

http://guide.infoseek.com

These search engines are free to use. Most are funded by advertising that you will see when you use them. Search engines vary in several ways: what part(s) of the internet they search, how the material is organized, how often it is updated, and the variety of search techniques supported.

When you do a "search" on the internet using one of these services, you are actually doing a search within the large database that has been previously created. To actually search the whole internet each time you wanted to find something would take a prohibitive amount of time.

All of these services use some sort of computer program to look for new information to be indexed. Some of these services (such as Yahoo) then have a staff of people to organize the material in some hierarchical fashion. The majority of them simply create a large index database automatically. The advantage of the human involvement is that people can use context, judgement and common sense to determine where a particular reference should be placed. The automated databases, of course, can handle a much larger volume of information more cheaply and quickly, and can therefore support a larger index to be searched.

The simplest way to search the internet is to use a site like Yahoo and keep picking topics until you narrow down to the one of interest. This is a very quick and useful technique when you are looking for fairly generic information, particularly if the topic is something that many people find interesting. For example, going to Yahoo and clicking on Government and then Law will lead you to a page listing about three dozen different categories of topics of possible interest. Often it is useful to find information with a combination of searching and then surfing the "hits". Because many sites will provide links to other sites, a search which does not directly find the information you want may still help you to find a site which does.

Another excellent technique exists when you are looking for fairly general information about a topic. This involves finding the list of "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ). These FAQs may exist in multiple places (often just multiple copies of the same document). The FAQ is usually the best single place to start when you are looking for information about a general topic on which you have little prior knowledge.

Specificity

One of the biggest problems one encounters when searching the internet is finding too much information. Searches are typically done using "keywords", much like the words one would look up in the index of a book to find a particular topic. Obviously, using a common word like "the" as a keyword is counterproductive. The most useful keyword is one which is likely to be found only with information that is of interest to you, and is unlikely to be found elsewhere. This is actually easier in technical areas like medicine or law; words like "peritoneum" or "adjudicate" don't come up a lot in common usage.

Using multiple keywords is highly recommended, unless you can pick a single word that is both specific and inclusive enough. Search engines differ, unfortunately, in how to use multiple words correctly. It is beyond the scope of this article to describe the specific syntax for these methods, but we can describe the basic ideas. You may need to learn about the available options of a particular search engine to get what you want. The search engine pages will contain the information about how to accomplish each, usually by clicking "Help" or "Advanced Searches" or "Options".

For example, I decided to look for informations about beagles. When I typed in the word beagle and did a search, I came up with many things totally unrelated to what I really wanted, including a recording studio named "Beagle Studios", a web page designer named "Savage Beagle Communications", and lots of links to photos of people's dogs. I then tried again, searching on beagle dog I came up with links to beagles, dogs and beagle dogs, actually making things worse (because I now included links to all pages with the word "dog").

The search that worked the best was beagle AND dog AND FAQ. This caused the search engine to return only sites that included all three words, vastly narrowing down the search. There are numerous techniques that can be used to narrow things down. The example above of beagle AND dog AND FAQ is an example of forced inclusion; i.e. to force the search engine to match only sites which include each word.

The opposite would be beagle OR dog OR FAQ. This would yield hits with ANY of those words (a very long list). Use of OR can be useful when there is more than one specific word that may relate to what you want to find. It is also possible to combine AND with OR in a search, but this may not have the results you intended, depending on the syntax of the search page being used.

You can also narrow down the search by excluding certain words. An example of forced exclusion would be lawyer - (minus sign) jokes. This example forces the search engine to find any reference to lawyer which does not include the word jokes. Another good technique is useful if you know that a certain phrase is going to be found in areas you find interesting. This is typically done by placing quotes around the phrase, for example "criminal law" would return sites that only included both words together. (Without the quotes, you would find sites with both words, but not necessarily together.) Using phrase searches can be tricky. Note that searching "crime and punishment" will not turn up the same hits as "punishment and crime".

It can also be helpful to use "wild card" characters in your searches. These characters (typically *) will tell the search engine that you don't care what letter or letters are in that part of the word. For example, univ* is the equivalent of searching university OR universe OR universal OR any other word starting with "univ".

All of these techniques (and others not described) can be used in conjunction, allowing you to perform very sophisticated searches. The best searches, however, often aren't very tricky, they just include and exclude the right set of words.

General Hints

Go to your previously bookmarked sites and see if you can find what you want quickly by surfing around.
Try using the pre-defined categories first before searching for specific words.
Read the FAQ! It may contain what you are looking for, and will often point you towards more specific information.
Disable graphics to improve the speed of downloads until you have found the site with the information you want. Then you can re-enable graphics and reload the page if you want to see the graphics. (This can cause problems on some sites; you may not be able to see all of the clickable topics, because they are displayed as graphics instead of text.)
During your searching, bookmark sites to which you may want to return in the future.
Learn how to include/exclude keywords on the engine you are using. Run a search, figure out what is causing unrelated hits, and use exclusion to narrow things down. Even if you are still getting hundreds or thousands of hits, go through some of them to see if the information is present.
If you aren't having any luck, try using a different search engine. You will get different results.
Decide if you are using your time wisely. If you can't find something in a reasonable amount of time on the internet, you may be better off going to the library!

Even the most sophisticated web user will sometimes not be able to find the information wanted. If you are familiar with the usenet newsgroups, there is another good technique available if used sparingly and wisely. Simply ask for help!

(Your www browser probably supports newsgroups. The newsgroups allow people to post messages and responses for anyone to read, and are organized by subject. Some service providers, however, censor which newsgroups they carry.)

For example, I was having problems when setting up a salt water aquarium. The books I own didn't cover the subject to my satisfaction. I had already read the alt.marine.aquaria.FAQ, and it didn't contain the specific information I wanted. I did some web searching/surfing, but still couldn't find exactly what I wanted to know. I then found the proper usenet newsgroup (alt.marine.aquaria) and posted a message with the title "PLEASE HELP-pH/sg" (I wanted to understand the relationship between pH and specific gravity of the salt water). I gave a description of my problem and what I wanted to know, along with my email address. Several people responded with answers. They didn't all tell me the same thing, and a couple were downright wrong (or they didn't understand my question), but they put me on the track to the right answer.

Warnings to those using this technique:

READ THE FAQ! There is no more certain way to incur the wrath of the internet community than by asking questions that are in the FAQ.
Post your question only on the proper newsgroups. Posting to inappropriate newsgroups is the second best way to get a lot of people mad at you.

Searching the internet for information can be useful, and it is possible to find information that can't be found any other way. It can also be difficult and frustrating, but like many things, it becomes easier as you practice. Like any search for information, the things you find that you weren't searching for can be the most interesting, and there are certainly many interesting things to be found on the www.

Marty Levy is a product manager in the Wireless Digital Signal Processor Division of Motorola in Austin, Texas. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Iowa.