Search Tips! still looking for that needle in the haystack...
General Tips for Searching:
Remember - the search engine is looking to match your words in a document - some find the match in only the title, others in the title and mini write up, others take the match from only the first 200 words in the document. Only a very few search the entire document - be sure to try several different words and several different search engines!! Don't ever only use one search engine - be sure to use an array. Most people use a combination of Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, Excite and Webcrawler.
Here's some tips for individual search engines:
Yahoo
- First - always click on options by the text box to really narrow your search.
- Put quotes around words in a phrase: "cat in the hat" (now it will ONLY find these 4 words together in a document)
- Specify with the "+" any word that MUST appear in the result : python +monty (eliminates millions of snake sites...)
- Specify with the "-" any word that MUST NOT appear in the result: pets -dogs (you'll get all pet sites but dog sites)
- Do a combination of the two: pets -dogs +cats (you'll get pet sites featuring cats!)
One nice thing about Yahoo is that you can search within a category if you click the little button to do so. This narrows your search enormously and often quickly finds your documents for you.
Lycos
- First - always go to custom search by the text box to strengthen your search.
- Specify with the "+" any word that MUST appear in the result : python +monty (eliminates millions of snake sites...)
- Specify with the "-" any word that MUST NOT appear in the result: pets -dogs (you'll get all pet sites but dog sites)
- Do a combination of the two: pets -dogs +cats (you'll get pet sites featuring cats!)
- Use a period "." after a keyword to force an exact match: ship. (find ONLY "ship", not shipping or shipyard etc)
- Use a dollar sign "$" when entering a word fragment: "car$" (finds car, cars, cart, carts, cartography etc)
AltaVista, WebCrawler and Excite
- First - always go to advanced search under the text box to strengthen your search.
- Use quote around your phrases: "cat in the hat" (only finds documents with all 4 words in it)
- To combine words with phrases, use AND, OR, NEAR, and NOT:
canoe AND "mississippi river" (both words will appear in the documents)
"Federal Bureau of Investigation" OR FBI (at least one of the choices will appear in the documents)
Paris NEAR Texas (finds documents where these two words are no more than 10 words apart)
drink AND NOT "sloe gin fizz" (excludes "sloe gin fizzes" from the resulting documents)
- Use parenthesis to really strengthen your search:
(dogs OR cats) AND fish (this finds documents containing "fish" with also either "dogs" or "cats" in them)
NOT (dogs AND cats) (eliminates documents with "dogs" and "cats" in them)
cats AND NOT (dogs NEAR cats) (finds "cats" pages where "dogs" is not within 10 words)
dogs NEAR (cats OR fish) (finds "dogs" within 10 words of "cats" together with ones of "dogs" close to "fish")
- Only use capital letters and accents when you want an exact match
kleenex (finds "kleenex" , "klEEnEx" as well as "Kleenex")
Kleenex (finds only "Kleenex")
cafe (finds "cafe" and "café")
café (find only "café")
- Use the * notation only after at least 3 letters
wood* (finds "woods", "woodwork" etc)
colo*r (finds "color" and "colour")
NOTE: only finds lower case, no digits and only finds up to 5 add-on letters (i.e. would not find "woodworking")
Too vast a search query will overwhelm the search and produce no results
- Constraining searches:
title:"People Magazine" (matches pages with the phrase "People Magazine" in the title)
anchor:click-here (matches pages with the phrase click here in the text of a hyperlink)
text:seneca (matches pages that contain the word "seneca" in any part of the visible text of a page)
applet:NervousText (matches pages containing the name of the Java applet class found in an applet tag)
object:Marquee (matches pages containing the name of the ActiveX object found in an object tag)
link:pgonline.com (matches pages that contain at least one link to a page with "pgonline.com"in its URL).
image:airplane.jpg (matches pages with "airplane.jpg" in an image tag)
url:agency.html (matches pages with the words "agency" & "html" together in the page's URL)
url:"agency html" (same as above)
host:pgonline.com (matches pages with the phrase "pgonline.com" in the host name portion of the URL)
domain:ca (matches pages from the domain "ca)
- Constraining searches in Usenet news articles:
from:fred@hixon.com (matches news articles with the words "fred@hixon.com" in the "From:" field)
subject:"apartments for rent" (matches news articles with the phrase "apartments for rent" in the "Subject:" field)
newsgroups:rec.humor (matches news articles posted (or crossposted) in newsgroups with "rec.humor" in the name)
summary:ear* (matches news articles with the word "ear", "earth", "earthworm" etc. in the summary)
keywords:FBI (matches news articles with the word FBI in all caps in the keyword list)
Associated With StormRuler's Windswept Homepage
(Back to the Main page), which is run by Saranna Benham-Parker, who is a third year Biology (BSC program) student. Any comments, please mail me at Stormruler@msn.com
