Search engines find information on the internet by using spiders or robots to crawl the web and index pages containing keywords, unlike databases which contain reviewed information from published sources. To perform an effective search, identify keywords and use Boolean operators like AND to narrow results, OR to expand them, and NOT to exclude terms. Phrase searching and title searching can help find specific phrases or pages containing the search terms in the title. Search engines generally interpret capitalization and plurals the same. Advanced operators allow limiting searches to specific sites, linked pages, or getting more site information. However, information online may be inaccurate or biased, so results should be evaluated carefully.

1. Search Engines & Effective Searching On The Web

2. Search EnginevsDatabase Database…The information comes from books, magazines, journals etc. which have gone through a review process. Search engines…They find information on the internet. There is not a review process. You make the judgment whether the information is valid and accurate.

3. Search Engines How do they work? Search engines use a “spider” or “robot” to crawl through the WWW to find websites that contain keywords or phrases

4. How do I begin and effective search? Identify keywords of your topic For example : Katy Tigers

5. Boolean searching Use AND to narrow search Katy AND Tigers It only return pages that have both words

7. Boolean Or Katy OR Tigers This will return pages that have at least one of these words on the page. This will expand your search.

9. Boolean NOT - This tells the search engine to retrieve one keyword but not the other word. For Example: Dolphins NOT Miami Dolphins –Miami

12. Phrase Searching Surround groups of words with quotation marks to tell the search engine to retrieve documents in which those words appear side by side. For example : “global warming”

14. Title searching This tells the search engine to only return web pages that have the phrase in the title. Title: “Global warming”

16. Plural Forms, Capital letters Most search engines interpret lowercase as either uppercase or lowercase. Limit your results by using uppercase letters. Most search engine interpret singular keywords as singular or plural. Limit results by using plural forms of words.

18. Domain Searching This will allow you to limit results to certain domains such as websites from the United Kingdom (.uk), educational institutions (.edu) or government sites (gov.)

19. Current domains in the US .com = a commercial business .edu = and educational institution .gov = a governmental institution .org = a non-profit organization .mil = a military site .net = a network site

21. Other advanced operators Site: search only one website example: site:www.katyisd.org

23. Link Use this to find linked pages to your website. link:www.katyisd.org

25. Information about a page Info:www.cancer.org If you want to find out more information about the web site.

27. Synonyms If you want information on both your keyword and its synonyms ~auto synonyms would be truck, car etc.

29. Use web sources with caution Internet sites are created for a variety of reasons Sell products Provide services Advertise Provide information To persuade To share interests and ideas

30. Remember Anyone can publish anything on the web and much of that information is inaccurate and biased.

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