This is a lecture for Senior High School Students on Empowerment Technology.

1. Contextualized Online Search
and Research Skills
Week 5: Handout #5

2. Contextual Search
• Contextual search is a form of optimizing web-based
search results based on context provided by the user and
the computer being used to enter the query.
• Contextual search services differ from current search
engines based on traditional information retrieval that
return lists of documents based on their relevance to the
query.
• Rather, contextual search attempts to increase the
precision of results based on how valuable they are to
individual users.

3. Basic Contextual Search
• The basic form of contextual search is the process of scanning the full-text of a
query in order to understand what the user needs.
• Web search engines scan HTML pages for content and return an index rating based
on how relevant the content is to the entered query.
• HTML pages that have a higher occurrence of query keywords within their content
are not rated higher.
• Users have limited control over the context of their query based on the words they
use to search with.
• For example, users looking for the menu portion of a website can add “menu” to
the end of their query to provide the search engine with context of what they
need.
• The next step in contextualizing search is for the search service itself to request
information that narrows down the results, such as Google asking for a time range
to search within.

4. Search Syntax
• Search syntax is a set of rules describing how users can
query the database being searched.
• Sophisticated syntax makes for a better search, one
where the items retrieved are mostly relevant to the
searcher's need and important items are not missed.
• It allows a user to look for combinations of terms,
exclude other terms, look for various forms of a word,
include synonyms, search for phrases rather than single
words.

5. Search Syntax Main Tools
• Boolean Logic
• Wildcards and Truncation
• Phrase Searching
• Proximity
• Capitalization
• Field Searching

6. Boolean Logic
• Boolean logic allows the use of AND, OR and NOT to
search for items containing both terms, either term, or a
term only if not accompanied by another term.
• Tip: NOT can be dangerous. Let's say you want to search
for items about Mexico, but not New Mexico, so you use
NOT to exclude the word "New" from your retrieved set.
This would prevent you from retrieving an article about
"New regulations in Mexico" because it contained the
word "New," though that wasn't what you intended.

7. Wildcards and Truncations
• This involves substituting symbols for certain letters of a word so that the search
engine will retrieve items with any letter in that spot in the word.
• The syntax may allow a symbol in the middle of a word (wildcard) or only at the
end of the word (truncation).
• This feature makes it easier to search for related word groups, like "woman" and
"women" by using a wildcard such as "wom*n."
• Truncation can be useful to search for a group of words like "invest, investor,
investors, investing, investment, investments" by submitting "invest*" rather than
typing in all those terms separated by OR's.
• The only problem is that "invest*" will also retrieve "investigate, investigated,
investigator, investigation, investigating."
• The trick, then is to combine terms with an AND such as "invest*" AND "stock* or
bond* or financ* or money" to try and narrow your retrieved set to the kind of
documents you're looking for.

8. Phrase Searching
• Many concepts are represented by a phrase rather
than a single word. In order to successfully search for
a term like "library school" it's important that the
search engine allow syntax for phrase searching.
• Otherwise, instead of getting documents about
library schools you could be getting documents about
school libraries or documents where the word
"library" and "school" both appear but have nothing
to do with a library school.

9. Proximity
• This allows the user to find documents only if the
search terms appear near each other, within so many
words or paragraphs, or adjacent to each other.
• It's a pretty sophisticated tool and can be tricky to
use skillfully. Many times you can accomplish about
the same result using phrase searching.

10. Capitalization
• When searching for proper names, search syntax that
will distinguish capital from lower case letters will
help narrow the search.
• In other cases, you would want to make sure the
search engine isn't looking for a particular pattern of
capitalization, and many search engines let you
choose which of these options to use.

11. Field Searching
• All database records are divided up into fields. Almost all search
engines in CD-ROM or online library products and the more
sophisticated Web search engines allow users to search for terms
appearing in a particular field.
• This can help immensely when you're looking for a very specific
item. Say that you're looking for a psychology paper by a professor
from the University of Michigan and all you remember about the
paper is that it had something about Freud and Jung in its title.
• If you think it may be on the Web, you can do a search in Alta Vista,
searching for "Freud" AND "Jung" and limit your search to the
"umich.edu" domain, which gives you a pretty good chance of
finding it, if it's there.

12. Google’s Search Syntax

13. Google’s Search Syntax
• allinanchor: If you start your query with allinanchor: Google restricts results to pages containing all
query terms you specify in the anchor text on links to the page. For example, [allinanchor: best
internet marketing] will return only pages in which the anchor text on links to the pages contain the
words “best,” “internet,” and “marketing.”
• allintext: If you start your query with allintext: Google restricts results to those containing all the
query terms you specify in the text of the page. For example, [allintext: seo services ] will return only
pages in which the words “seo” and “services” appear in the text of the page.
• allintitle: If you start your query with allintitle: Google restricts results to those containing all the
query terms you specify in the title. For example, [allintitle: internet marketing] will return only
documents that contain the words “internet” and “marketing” in the title.
• allinurl: If you start your query with allinurl: Google restricts results to those containing all the query
terms you specify in the URL. For example, [allinurl: google faq] will return only documents that
contain the words “google” and “faq” in the URL, such as “www.google.com/help/faq.html”.

14. Google’s Search Syntax
• author: If you include author: in your query, Google will restrict your Google Groups results to
include newsgroup articles by the author you specify. The author can be a full or partial name or
email address. For example, [ seo author:john author:doe ] or [ seo author:doe@someaddress.com ]
return articles that contain the word “seo” written by John Doe or doe@someaddress.com.
• cache: The query cache:url will display Google’s cached version of a web page, instead of the current
version of the page. For example, [ cache:www.espn.com] will show Google’s cached version of the
ESPN home page.
• define: If you start your query with define: Google shows definitions from pages on the web for the
term that follows. This advanced search operator is useful for finding definitions of words, phrases,
and acronyms. For example, [ define: seo ] will show definitions for “SEO”.
• ext: This is an undocumented alias for filetype:
• filetype: If you include filetype:suffix in your query, Google will restrict the results to pages whose
names end in suffix. For example, [ seo evaluation filetype:pdf ] will return Adobe Acrobat pdf files
that match the terms “seo” and “evaluation.”

15. Google’s Search Syntax
• link: The query link:URL shows pages that link back to that URL. For example, to
find pages that point to ESPN’s home page, enter:[ link:www.espn.com ]
• location: If you include location: in your query on Google News, only articles
from the location you specify will be returned. For example, [seo location:india ]
will show articles that match the term “seo” from sites in India. Many other
country names work; try them and see.
• movie: If you include movie: in your query, Google will find movie-related
information.
• phonebook: If you start your query with phonebook: Google shows all public
U.S. residence telephone listings (name, address, phone number) for the person
you specify.

16. Google’s Search Syntax
• related: The query related:URL will list web pages that are similar to the web page you
specify. For instance, [related:www.consumerreports.org ] will list web pages that are
similar to the Consumer Reports home page.
• site: If you include site: in your query, Google will restrict your search results to the site or
domain you specify.
• source: If you include source: in your query, Google News will restrict your search to
articles from the news source with the ID you specify. For example, [ election
source:new_york_times ] will return articles with the word “election” that appear in the
New York Times.
• weather: If you enter a query with the word weather and a city or location name, if
Google recognizes the location, the forecast will appear at the top of the results page.
Otherwise, your results will usually include links to sites with the weather conditions and
forecast for that location.

17. Online Research Skills
1. Check Your Sources
Evaluating information found in your
sources on the basis of accuracy, validity,
appropriateness for needs, importance,
and social and cultural context

18. Online Research Skills
2. Ask Good Questions
Developing and refining search queries to
get better research results

19. Online Research Skills
3. Go Beyond the Surface
Displaying persistence by continuing to
pursue information to gain a broad
perspective

20. Online Research Skills
4. Be Patient
Displaying emotional resilience by
persisting in information searching despite
challenges

21. Online Research Skills
5. Respect Ownership
Respecting intellectual property rights of
creators and producers

22. Online Research Skills
6. Use Your Networks
Using social networks and information
tools to gather and share information

23. Sources:
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contextual_searching
• http://www.ipl.org/div/aplus/skills.htm
• https://www.highervisibility.com/blog/google-
search-syntax-explained/
• https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teachi
ng-content/6-online-research-skills-your-students-
need/