Google is a powerful tool, but is not the only way to search the Internet.
Many of the best resources on the Internet are hidden from search engines and
cannot be found with regular search. This hidden Internet which requires users
to search data bases is is commonly called the Invisible Web.
These data bases are often the best way to get reliable information because
web resources in the data bases have been selected by research experts. For
example, web resources in the research site, Librarians
index to the Internet, are are high-quality web sites carefully
selected, described, and organized by professional librarians. See below for
more information.
Search Engines
- Allow users to search by keywords
- Allow some boolean search Capabilities (And, Or)
- May allow special features to filter searches
- The most popular search engine is
Google Tutorial
The main search engines are
Details about Search Engines
Searching Considerations
- Basic Searching Tips
- Default boolean operator is AND
- weather and london is the same as london
weather
- Put the most important term first
Use "+"
to search stop words such as "the", "to", "a"
- use +to +be +or +not +to +be instead of to
be or not to be
- Use quotes if you want the string of words to be together
- use "great lakes" instead of great
lakes
- Omit needless words, however using appropriate extra key words may be
helpful in narrowing down hits
- Use "-" to remove a word
- e.g.. want to find virus without searching computer virus use virus
-computer
- Can Limit Searches
to the following (choose Google advanced Search):
- File type - you can limit your search to Power Point presentations
or PDF file formats
- limit your search only to Power Point Presentations (.ppt)
- limit to MicroSoft Excel data tables (.xls)
- limit to PDF files (.pdf)
- Language - limit search to only different languages (French, German
Chinese, English etc.)
- Domain Type - Useful if trying to search only educational sites
(.edu)
- When searching
for text with in a web page, use the browers find command (usually CTRL
F)
- Becoming a Google Expert
- Type in a math formula to get the answer. Only works for basic math
functions (+,-,*,/, ^ power of)
- eg. 3 * (4+2) returns the result 18
- Type define: to get a word's definition
- Search only within a site
- eg map site: www.trentu.ca
- Search only sites that have been modified over a given number of months.
- Search Da Vinci Code only on sites which have been modified over
the last 2 months
- eg Da Vinci Code date:1
- Search sex education sites with being directed to sex sites
- Searching Canadian Sites
- Searching google.com is the same as searching google.ca if you are searching
from a computer in Canada. Google knows you are in Canada because of the
Internet providers registered location
Click
on pages from Canada, if you want to force google to only
search sites which are contained physically on Canadian Internet Providers
servers
- This will NOT necessarily search all Canadian sites as the site may
physically be located on a server not in Canada
- Learn more on searching:
- Rank Order of Searches
- Complex Algorithm is used by search engine to rank the order of the
search results. Order is determined by the following:
- How many other web pages have links to that site
- Some domains such as ".gov" are given more weight
- Key word is in the title of web page
- Older sites have a higher ranking (i.e. A better
newer site may not be found easily even with the correct key word search)
- The Internet is not searched in real time. If a web site is brand new
or has been recently edited then changes are not immediately known to
search engines
- When is it best to use a Search Engine
- Finding common factual information (eg. What date was Henry VIII born
?)
- Finding web sites (URL's) that you cannot remember the web address
- Finding proper names of people or companies
- Finding information which may not be found in typical publications.
which may not be main stream
- eg. finding information on "Gekiga" yields not results
in EBSCO Host (Searching 2500 periodicals) but does an article in
Wikipedia when searched through Google
- When is it best NOT to use a search engine
- Researching controversial issues when people have personal and political
opinions. Many sites are biased and are not factual
- Trying to find Canadian Content. Canadian sites may be hosted on foreign
servers and cannot be found by clicking pages from Canada
(see above).
Google Scholar
- Searchable index of peer reviewed academic articles
- Best for scientific and medical research
- Mainly the abstracts are shown - not the full articles
- Good way to teach students how to search journals
- Search engines cannot see articles and text which are indexed in searchable
data bases. Searchable data bases require the user to type in key works in
specific boxes therefore the users has to do the search from the search database's
web site
- Some web pages are deliberately excluded
- Detailed article on the Invisible Web click
here
Librarians index to the Internet 
Scholarly Internet Resources Collection
Academic
Info is an online subject directory of over 25,000 hand picked educational
resources for high school and college students 
Vast collection of CBC stories (video, audio and text)
The Research Discovery Network selects, catalogues and delivers high-quality
Internet resources for further and higher education: the best of the Web.
Sources
Caplan, Jeremy. "Be a Google Expert." Time Vol.167, Iss. 8( Feb
20, 2006): 44.
Ellen Chamberlain. "bare bones 101: A basic tutorial on searching the
web".
9 May 2006. <http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/pages/bones/bones.shtml>.
Vine, Rita, "Beyond Google", Clarington Centeral Secondary School,
Apr 21 2006.
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