If you know what you are looking for, and you can define that with a
number of key words or phrases, use a free text search engine.
If you
need an overview of a subject, or you're not sure of exactly what you want to
look for, use an index or directory based search engine.
If you want a
comprehensive, quick and dirty search, try using a meta or multi search engine
instead.
If you have a very precise piece of information that you need,
see if you can identify a site or subject specific search engine.
Some search engines that come into this category are:
Some key criteria for this type of search engine:
They search and
index large numbers of pages, down to individual word level, so they are
reasonably comprehensive. (Note: reasonably)
They are fairly up to date, and
try and index and re-index pages on a regular basis
They relevance rank
results, but will come up with different rankings, so don't simply rely on one
search engine.
Mainly created and run by computers, not individuals
Some of these are:
Some key criteria for this type of search engine:
They index sites,
not pages
They arrange web sites in a hierarchical order
They are not
comprehensive
They are not always particularly current
Human
intervention, rather than the indexing being done by computer
Some good search engines in this category are:
Some key criteria for this type of search engine:
They search across
a large number of search engines and collate the results for you
They are
not always very good at searching for very precise syntax, so it's best to do
quick and dirty searches.
They usually only index the top ten or twenty
results each search engine returns, so in theory you get the 'best of the
best'
They can be unreliable.
Assuming that you have a query for which you need an answer, perhaps the
first question to ask yourself is 'Is the Internet the best resource to use?'.
In many cases of course it will be, but the Internet doesn't have the answer to
every question that you might need to know. You therefore need to consider the
strengths and weaknesses of the Internet, in conjunction with your other
resources.
Questions to ask yourself at this point therefore are:
Do any of my traditional resources contain the answer that I need? If they do, you may find it quicker and easier to simply use those; the job of an information professional is surely to get the answer to a question quickly and correctly. Consequently, the actual resource used doesn't really matter that much, as long as the answer is right, and there is no point in using the Internet for the sake of it - you may find out that it takes you twice as long to get half the information that you would do using other resources.
Do I need to find the information out quickly? Your choice of tool should again be affected by this. If the answer is in a book on the shelf behind you, it's likely that you'll get the answer quicker that way, rather than spending time logging onto the Internet, locating a search engine, running the search, checking the web page and getting the answer. On the other hand, if you don't have immediate access to the information that you need the Internet may well be the fastest way you have of retrieving the data.
What format do I need the information in? Very often you may have a requirement to manipulate the data once you have got hold of it, by putting it into a database, spreadsheet or word processed document for example. It's going to be much more time consuming doing that with data that you find in a printed format, less so if you can take the data from a CD-ROM or off the Internet. You may also find it useful to obtain sound or visual data, and once again, electronic sources such as the Internet may be your best resource for that.
Do you need an overview of a subject, or indepth information? Some search engines such as Yahoo! will provide you with a good overview of which sites cover your area of interest, while others such as Ask Jeeves will provide you with answers to your question that allow you to do a lot of background reading.
Do you fully understand the information you have been asked to provide? In this instance, search engines can be of some assistance, provided you chose the right one. It's easy to quickly utilise an Index/Directory based search engine to guide you in your search if you don't know the most appropriate terms to use.
Does the information need to be current? If that is the case, the Internet may very well be the best resource to start your search with, particularly if you need current affairs/events information as some portals such as My Yahoo! or My Excite or Create Your Own Newspaper allow you to chose your newsfeed(s). Consequently, this allows you to tailor or focus your search in particular areas, while more traditional resources such as books, magazines or CD-ROM's will not be that up to date.
Do you need an authoritative answer? If this is the case, you need to be slightly wary of using the Internet, since there is no checking procedure in place - anyone can (almost without limit) write exactly what they wish to, and if you are unfamiliar with checking your Internet resource you may find that the information you use is not accurate or up to date.
Do you need an international perspective on a question? The Internet may score very highly for you here, since it is of course, international in scope. You may be able to get an international flavour by going to a foreign website, or it might even be appropriate to ask other professionals in other countries by posting a message to an appropriate mailing list or newsgroup for example.
Break your search down into appropriate elements, using keywords that reflect the information that you wish to acquire. Use as necessary synonyms and American spellings to fully cover the subject area. Decide which of these are most important. Consider using phrases to further clarify your search. Use phrases that you would expect to find on a webpage, by considering how an webpage author would use them. For example, the phrase 'Who wrote Gone with the Wind' isn't likely to bring up many results in a free text search engine, while the phrase 'was the author of Gone with the Wind' is more likely to produce results.
Also consider other points: are you interested in a regional search, to bring up web pages produced in a particular country or region, or do you want to do a global search? Do you want to run a search for words in the text of the page, or in the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), or perhaps in the title? Do you need the words to be near each other?
Consider the type of pages that you want to retrieve. Do you want any pages, or those produced by commercial, academic or personal pages?
Are there terms that are ambiguous - are you looking for Jaguar the animal, or Jaguar the car? How can you use other terms to restrict your search?
Example:
Let's take that last example, and presume that you want a
list of dealers who sell Jaguar cars. Possible terms to consider using are:
Jaguar cars car automobile automobiles vehicle vehicles dealer dealers
dealership
and possible phrases might be
'Jaguar cars' 'Jaguar car
dealers' or even 'Jaguar car showroom' for example.
And a term that will
help narrow down your search might be to exclude references to animal for
example. If you also want to simply bring up results for a particular country
you will then need to (obviously) decide on the country or region.
Once you have done some basic work like this, you can next decide which search engines are going to give you the best results. Using our Jaguar example, we have lots of reasonably specific terms that we can use, so it may well be appropriate to use a free text search engine such as AltaVista, Google or Hotbot for example. Alternatively, if you want to find companies, it may be more appropriate to use something like a Yellow Pages search engine.
Let's return to the example mentioned earlier, that of the Jaguar
dealers. Construct your search, deciding on whichever search terms you think
are appropriate. Visit a free text search engine of your choice, and run the
search. If you prefer, you may wish to try the search:
cars car automobile
jaguar
and see the results that you obtain. In all probability, you will get
many thousands, if not millions of results. What you should next try to do is
to reduce the number of hits that you get, while increasing the accuracy - this
is known as Increasing precision (gaining greater accuracy) while decreasing
recall (getting a smaller number of hits).
Use the double quotes "for phrase
searching" which will reduce your numbers, or all in more terms, or exclude
terms by using the minus symbol.
Reduce the number of terms you are searching for, or look for a broader term. Try using a multi/meta search engine perhaps.