Week Nine

Queries, Strategies and Selecting Results

Lecture Notes

In today's lecture we discussed the different categories of information on the Internet and Search Engines.
The three categories of information on the Internet are:
The free, visible web; these are the sites that search engines will find.
The free, invisible web; these are the sites that search engines can't find and,
Paid databases over the web: these are commercial, like libraries and the ECU database system for example.
We learnt that search tools fall into two main categories, Search Engines and Directories.
Directories have been checked by people and edited to a certain level, so the results received from this kind of search would be more accurate.
There are many, many different search enignes on the Internet today, and they all work differnetly. No two search engines will return exacly the same results, thats why we were reminded to think beyond Google, when doing research on the Internet. Search Engines work by having 'spiders' that 'crawl'. These spiders as such search the web for new, and already existing sites that aren't already in their index.




Google Ask Jeeves All the Web Turbo 10

Search engines such as Google, Hot bot and UltraVista have an index of over 1 billion pages, which has both positives and negatives. Some negatives are that you can receive too many results and un related information when searching. Search engines can't delete pages fom their index's so they jsut continue to grow and grow, so you get results of 'broken' or expired pages.

Tutorial Activities

Task One

From reading the tutorial on the web page http://www.monash.com/spidap.html these are the four strategies I found to help me structure a good search on a search engine.
1. Make sure I have a specific objective or aim in mind in regards to the kinds of information I want to find. Try to narrow down my topic.
2. Entering my words I want to search as a phrase, rather than separate words. This will give me a bigger chance of receiving sites that I am looking for.
3. By placing your search words, or phrase in quotation marks, (" ") the search engine will only return sites that have those words in order on its pages. This is helpful because it refines your search even further.
4. This web page also says that it is sometimes better to use a web directory that a search engine. "If you are clear about the topic of your query, start with a Web directory rather than a search engine. Directories probably won't give you anywhere near as many references as a search engine will, but they are more likely to be on topic" (Barlow, Monash University, 2004).

Task Two

I completed the online quiz found at http://www.siteseen.co.uk/questions/generalknowledgehard/ . Below are my screen captures from the quiz. An example of what kind of questions where in the quiz and a capture of my certificate I received when I finished it.




Task Three

The strategies I used to complete the above quiz are ones that I learnt on the day of my lecture and tutorial. To use keywords in searches and to put those keywords in quotation marks so I only received results with those words in that particular order in them. I found this to be very effective as everytime I did a search this way, I found my answer everytime, and just from the headings on the webpages. I only used one search engine, Google, and that was because I found all my answers here so I didn't need to go anywhere else.

What I have learnt so far about this Module, is that there are so many more search engies out there on the Internet than I thought there where. And that when doing a search, if you type words like and, if, not, like, in CAPITALS, they become involved in the search. I also learnt from Justine that if you are searchign a topic, like Dogs for example, you can find more, and maybe more relevant information if you also include words like, Cocker Spaniel, Goldren Retriever or Poodle in your search. By doing this you are searchign for more keywords and it helps the search engine as well as yourself.


Week Nine Readings

1. Internet Search Tips and Strategies http://www.virtualsalt.com/howlook.htm
This reading is all about search tips and strategies for search engines. It discusses teh differnt types of web there is, like the invisible and the visible web, and goes on to talk about the different types of search tools that are available on the Internet. These are Search Engines and Directories. It then goes on to explain in detail different search tips and ideas to help the reader perform a better research search.



2. A Helpful Guide to Search Engines www.monash.com/spidap.html
This web page discusses different ways in which you can use a search engine. It has links to search engines of all different types. When clicking on a link to a connected page also talking about Searching strategies, it says that we need to remember that we are smarter than computers, and that search engines are fast, but dumb. The web page also explains that you should know where to look and to 'fine tune' your search phrase or keywords.


3. Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156611
This website, I think would have a lot of useful information for people who are just starting to research this topic. To me, it outlined a lot of the basics involved in this topic, but they were still very useful. This page is like a home page as such for other sites, that it connects users to. It has three sites that it recommends through its own search engine, and then it has links to other sites from other sources.



4. Search Engines, Chapter Four http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/chap4.htm
I liked the fact that this site explains the history of the Internet and search engines to the reader. I feel as if this made me feel more involved and appreciative of what search engines do. This page also has screen shots, and I think if a reader out there was to see this they would appreciate it very much, as it helps to explain what they author is saying.