Search Engines 4
1.
-
http://www.google.com.au
- Google is not case sensitive.
That means that it does not matter if your search says
Koalas or
koalas. You can use a capital or not.
- Google does not do "word
stemming". This means that doing a search for "cat"
will NOT produce results for "cat"
"catalogue" or "catastrophe".
- Google will ignore common
words. If you type "Lord of the Rings"
it will only do a search for Lord
and Rings. It will ignore "of
the" as they are so common.
- If you want to include words, like
the common words, single words or numbers, you must put a + sign in front of the word. So to
include "of" from the example,
it would look like +of.
- If you want all the phrase "Lord
of the Rings" you need to include quote marks " " as I
have.
- if you wish to use the best of Google, use the "Advanced
Search" option
2.
-
http://au.altavista.com/
- AltaVista is different in that you can find
a specific word in a web address.
- For instance, you can type url:garden into the search bar to find all the pages with
"garden" anywhere in their name.
- AltaVista will also help you find
pages that are like the
one you wish to find. For example, type in like:www.amazon.com would find other pages that
sell new books.
- AltaVista will also search within the
text of web pages. Type in
text:football and the
search engine will search for the word football in all parts of the
page except the address, pictures and hyperlinks to other pages.
- Type in image:cars and AltaVista will find webpages containing
images that are called "cars".
3.
-
http://www.lycos.com
- Go to
http://www.lycos.com/search/options and Lycos will help you with a
search guide. It gives you an easy-to-complete form which allow you to
search for pages that contain or exclude certain phrases.
- It also lets you search in various
catalogues, which may include pictures or music for example.
4.
.http://au.yahoo.com/
- Click on the "My" button on the top
of the front page to get a "personal" version of the Yahoo! This will help you
have the chance to have the news or features you want, so you won't have to
search for them all the time. Like a football team you follow or news or the
weather etc.
- At Yahoo! you can keep your search to
within a particular topic. Click on the one that seems to have the heading you
think may have the best chance of having what you want.
- You can search the world or just the
country of your choice.
- Don't forget the excellent "Yahooligans" -
a search engine for kids.
5.
Finally, much information about the best way to
use each search engine is to be found. Usually it will be a hyperlink called
something like "search tips". You should have a look as this will help you get
the best possible results and save you a lot of time.
by Wayne
August 2002
checked June 2005