A fight with the internet through Google

SERCHING THE NET
 

Although the internet is full of information that are not limited to a specific focus and is a vast library, a university or even more (no words to describe), many find it as a challenge to get what they need from the internet. Yes, it is little bit hard until we know the correct techniques and strategies to find something in the internet.

There are various search engines and directories waiting to help on our needs. The search result is depends on how efficiently we use the keywords. There are numerous methods to provide the keywords against the topic we search for that are specific to each search engines.

Today amongst most search engines Google from http://www.google.com stay on top of all. It is not only easy to use but also powerful in crawling and produces the specific result. Google's privacy policy says that it "notes and saves information such as time of day, browser type, browser language, and IP address with each query you made. That information is used to verify our records and to provide more relevant services to users. For example, Google may use your IP address or browser language to determine which language to use when showing search results or advertisements." (See also www.google.com/privacy.html )

Search Strategies

When you choose the search terms you enter in to Google, think about the titles you expect to see on this pages. The more well-known your target, the easier it will be to find.

Common ways

Imagine your topic

Enter a single word. This is the common way most of us use. This results in a large number of search results unless it is a commercial trade mark and we are looking for the relevant company’s website.

Use several Words

When we use several words, Google takes each word as a query and search for pages that contains any of these words. Even this results in large amount of search results.

For example if we enter the words Michel Ben, first and last name of a person to find, Google will result in all pages that contains only Michel, only Ben and both Michel Ben. The results will not only the Michel Ben.

Use Quotation marks

This is a more effective way to limit our search. If we use the previous example with quotation mark “Michel Ben”, the result will contain the pages that are specific only to Michel Ben.

Using keywords more effectively…

Use + (Plus sign)

This is another way to get result that is oriented to more than one word.

For example if we use computer + virus, it forces Google to include both words in the resultant. So the every page in the result definitely contains the words computer and virus. It is not necessary to be the words in the result are in the same order that we provide.

Use – (Minus sign)

The plus sign adds a word to a search so using a minus sign takes one away. This is very useful as a way of eliminating lots of hits that we don't want.

For example, if we use the term like virus –computer, the result will not contain pages that are specific to computer virus.

Use site: command

If the result gives up too many sites and we know or need result from specific site, we can limit our search to specific site using this ‘site:’ command along with the keyword.

For Example,

• legal site:.gov                                   - will search the word ‘legal’ only in the government sites.
  
• hacking site:Microsoft.com       - will search the word ‘hacking’ only in Microsoft.com domain
  
• “overseas education” site:.edu         - will search the words “overseas education”  in only ‘.edu’ sites.

• Use filetype: command
  
• filetype:pdf      - will resuld only PDF files

Use Google Directory

From within Google or via http://directory.google.com/ , browse or search within specific categories. This is also an easy way to brows pages by topics.

Yet we cannot find enough? Expand the search…

Use OR operator

Google also understand the logical ‘OR’ till it is in caps.

For example, if we need to find either Flying Canada or Flying USA, we may use as flying Canada OR USA. Or even use the | (pipe) symbol instead of OR.

flying Canada | USA.

Use the ~ (tilde character) to find synonyms

If we use the ~food , Google also searches for its synonyms. The result will contains the given words and its matching words.

Use wild card (*) character

For example, if we provide the term “thinking * hard”, Google will search pages that has this term filled with any words instead of * character. We can use more than one * characters in a single query.

Google Image search

We can use the same techniques to search images in Google. It is a great way to search for images in the web.

Other Google tools…

• www.google.com           search for Web pages
  
• www.google.com/help   learn more about using Google
  
• news.google.com           search news sources on the Web
  
• images.google.com         search for pictures on the Web
  
• directory.google.com     browse categories of Web pages
  
• answers.google.com       experienced researchers find answers for a fee
  
• groups.google.com         search the content of online discussions
  
• froogle.google.com        search for items on sale on the Web
  
• labs.google.com             check out the latest inventions from Google