Becoming a Power Searcher

an Internet-Based Treasure Hunt on Internet Search Strategies

by Kay Findley

findleyk@ten-nash.ten.k12.tn.us

Introduction| The Task| The Questions| The Big Question| Resources

Introduction

Do you ever feel lost and confused when searching for specific information on the Internet? Do you spend a long time searching and find little useful information on your topic? Do you often need hard-to-find pictures to complete a multimedia presentation? If so, then this treasure hunt is for you. This practice will help you become a power searcher on the Internet. To become a power searcher you need to become familiar with several search tools or "search engines". It is also necessary to practice some specific search strategies which will help you find relevant information quicker and easier.

The Task

You and a partner will search the Internet using the search strategies shown to you in this treasure hunt. Then you will choose a subject of interest to you and explore several single and meta- search engines. At the end of the search you will be required to evaluate the search engines using the evaluation form to determine which search engine you consider to be the best for your purpose in this particular search.

The Questions

First you will practice some search strategies using the AltaVista search engine, an extremely fast search engine for searching web pages.

Print your answer sheet for this section now

For a single word search : PLACE A + IN FRONT OF THE WORD LIKE THIS: +dolphin

1. Search in AltaVista for this word : +dolphin

Include (+) and Exclude (-)

The another basic search tool you need to practice is the use of + and - to include and exclude words. Suppose you wanted to search for the sea animal dolphin, not the Miami Dolphins football team. When you add -Miami to the end of the word Dolphin, the search will exclude the word Miami for your search and limit your search.

Note: There is no space between the + and the word, but there is a space between the first word and -

2. Search in AltaVista for this : +dolphin -Miami

Use the Wildcard (*)

A common mistake is to narrow your search too much by excluding variations of a word you are looking for. For example, if you type in +dolphins, you would miss any pages that had the singular word dolphin on it.

The wildcard (*) can stand for any letter.

Suggestion: Never search for the plural of a word, just add the * wildcard to the end of the word and get both forms automatically.

3. Search in AltaVista for this : +dolphin*

4. Search in AltaVista for this also: +dolphin* -Miami

To leave out Miami but include porpoises:

5. Search these words in AltaVista: +dolphin* -Miami +porpoise

Also try this example to include the plural of porpoise

6. Search these words in AltaVista: +dolphin* -Miami +porpoise*

Use "Quotes" to look for a phrase

If you want AltaVista to look for a group of words that hang together as a phrase you should put quotation marks around them. Otherwise it will look for each of these words by itself.

7. Search in AltaVista for: To Kill a Mockingbird

8. Search in AltaVista for: "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Use the Image: tag to look for pictures

You can look for pictures to illustrate your pages or multimedia presentations by typing image:whale

9. Search in AltaVista for: image:whale

You can also use the Specialty Search in AltaVista to look for pictures by clicking on the AV Photo and Media Finder near the top of the AltaVista page. Here you can view the picture without going to the actual web page where it is found. You should go to the actual web page to save the picture you need, however.

10. Search in the "AV Photo and Media Finder" on the AltaVista search page for dolphin

Use the Title: Tag to focus your search

A word search will look for your search term anywhere on the web page. To find pages that are mainly about your topic, you may want to look for pages that have your topic in the title of the page.

This is how you do it:

11. Search AltaVista for: title:dolphin

To also include the plural form in your search try this:

12. Search AltaVista for: title:dolphin*

Now compare the number of relevant sites you get when searching for the word alone

13. Search AltaVista for: +dolphin

14. Search AltaVista for: +dolphin*

Now you will use a subject of your own choice to search in other search engines.

Print your Internet search engine evaluation sheet now.

Visit Yahoo!, a engine that allows you to search Yahoo's directory site and the web.

15. Search Yahoo! for your chosen subject

Didn't find exactly what you were looking for on Yahoo? or maybe you need more? Try searching for your subject with Excite, which has the second-largest database of current web sites.

16. Search Excite for your chosen subject

Now try InfoSeek. This search engine accepts natural language questions such as, "What is the meaning of Life" but also accepts single word searches.

17. Search InfoSeek for your chosen subject

Try some Meta-Search Engines which search through several single search engines for your subject at the same time.

Look for your subject in Dogpile, a very fast and efficient meta-search engine.

18. Search Dogpile for your chosen subject

Try Mamma, a meta-search engine that bills itself as "the mother of all search engines"

19. Search Mamma for your chosen subject

Try MetaCrawler, a favorite meta-search engine which eliminates duplicate sites

20. Search MetaCrawler for your chosen subject

Try Searchopolis, a filtered search engine with appropriate sites for students

21. Search in Searchopolis for your chosen subject

Now try one additional single or meta search engine of your choice from the resources page.

22. Search in an additional search engine for your chosen subject

The Big Question (Evaluation)

Now using the evaluation sheet tell your opinion of the search engines you used while conducting a search on the topic of your choice. You will need to print out the Evaluation Sheet and evaluate each search engine for the features listed. Tabulate which search engine had the most plus marks (+) to determine which search engine was most useful and appealing to you while doing this search.