Search Strategies

1. Search Strategies Are you having trouble finding what you want on the internet? Here are a few search strategies that will help you quickly and efficiently find what you are looking for.

2. Search Engines • When beginning an internet search, what do you do first? • When looking for information about Antarctica, would you type in www.antarctica.com? • Let’s see what happens-

4. Search Engines • Okay, that didn’t work. • Let’s try www.skateboards.com

5. Search Engines • So, the “dot.com” formula doesn’t seem to work. • What can we use to search for topics of interest? • What “search engines” have you used? Which ones do you like best and why? • There are several out there, and they each have their own usefullness.

6. Search Engines • For younger students or very basic easy to read information: • www.askforkids.com (www.ask.com is the adult version) • This one allows you to search using natural language processing, like the way we speak. You can type in your question- “What is Antarctica like?” It often provides related topics as well.

7. Search Engines • www.yahooligans.com • This site provides categories for your search topic to help get you started. • It also provides category matches with a description of the information you will find, but the descriptions are brief.

8. Search Engines • www.kidsclick.org • This site offers a reading level to help you determine whether or not the text will be appropriate for you. • It provides detailed descriptions of the information you will find on each site. • Unfortunately, there are fewer hits for topics on this site.

9. Search Engines • For older students and adults: • www.google.com • This site uses text matching to match your search terms with over 8 billion websites. • It ranks and lists the websites by popularity (and therefore usefulness). • It offers spell check– “Did you mean…” and topics related to your search terms.

10. Search Engines • Other search engines for adults include: • www.yahoo.com • search.aol.com • www.ask.com • Meta-search engines search other search engines for you: • www.webcrawler.com • www.dogpile.com

11. Key Words • Do you think about which words you ought to use before beginning a search? • Some keywords are too broad such as, “Antarctica,” “volcano,” “animals” • Some keywords are too wordy such as, “types of animals who live in Antarctica,” “types of wrestling moves,” “What was Jim Carrey’s childhood like?”

12. “Topic + Focus” • A “just right” key word search uses the topic + focus such as, “wrestling + techniques,” “Antarctica + vegetation,” “African American + “Nobel Prize” + literature,” • What if the researcher left out “literature” in the last example? • Use Topic + Focus • What is the history of lacrosse? lacrosse history

13. Evaluating the Search Engine Results • How do you choose a website from the list? • Do you just pick one at random? • Do you click on each of them in order until you find one that is useful? • Do you give up if the first one or two do not yields good results? • Instead, ask “Which website will match my informational needs?” • Read the descriptions underneath to determine usefulness and make a choice. • Be sure you have a clear topic + focus in mind first!