Search+Skills

= **Online Search Tips/ Skills/ Strategies/ Search Engines** **Search Engines** = **The first part of a URL - before the colon - describes the access method (protocol).** Data can be made available on the Internet via a number of different search engines: http://whatis.techtarget.com/ || http://www.yahooligans.com/ ||
 * Altavista http://altavista.com/ || Hotbot http://www.hotbot.com ||
 * Google http://www.google.com || Yahoo http://search.yahoo.com/ ||
 * Bing http://www.bing.com/ || Looksmart http://www.looksmart.com/ ||
 * WebCrawler http://www.webcrawler.com || What is?.com
 * ixquick http://www.ixquick.com || Lycos http://www.lycos.com ||
 * Dogpile http://www.dogpile.com || Yahooligans! (kids)

**Primary sites include:** full-text documents <span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">images <span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">sound files <span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">multimedia sites

**Secondary (or referential) sites** search engines information gateways virtual libraries lists of links bibliographies

|| <span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">mailto:
 * = http:// ||= aWorldWideWebserver(WWW) ||
 * = ftp:// ||= <span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">File Transfer Protocol

||= Email ||
 * = <span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">telnet://

||= Telnet || ||= Gopher ||
 * = <span style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal 'Times New Roman'; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">gopher://

**Country Codes and Organizations** You can sometimes get a clue about the country the server is based in from the country code. For example: A list of country and organization codes is at http://www.netskills.ac.uk/TonicNG/content/detective/60.html


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">au || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">Australia ||  || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">fr || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">France ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">ac, edu || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">academic or educational servers ||  || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">org || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">non-governmental, non-profit making organizations ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">net || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">network ||  || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">uk || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">United Kingdom ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">co, com || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">commercial servers ||  || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">mil || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Military ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">gov || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">government servers ||  || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">us || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; vertical-align: super;">united states ||

= Search Skills =


 * Using the word **AND** between two words or phrases finds pages with both words or phrases. computers AND teaching.
 * Using the word **OR** between two words or phrases finds pages with at least one of the words or phrases. laptops OR palmtops.
 * Using the words **AND NOT** between two words or phrases finds pages with the desired word/phrase where the second word/phrase is not included. computers AND NOT Compaq.
 * Using the word **NEAR** between two words or phrases finds pages where those words/phrases occur close to one another in any order – Jackie NEAR Silberg.
 * To find all the pages that contain the variations of a word, i.e. child, children, childhood, etc., type **child** ***** . This can also be use to find pages which may contain variations in the spelling of a word - to get pages for theater and theatre, type theat*.
 * To find pages that contain a particular image or picture, such as “butterfly”, type **image:butterfly or picture:butterfly**.
 * To find pages that contain a word in the URL, such as computers, type **url:computers.**
 * To find who linked to a certain web page. Type **link:http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/**
 * **+ includes – excludes** particular subjects. +jazz + music find all the pages which has jazz and music
 * **To get phrases in pairs**, use quotation mark around the words **“jazz music”** gets things in pairs.
 * To find the selected keyword(s) in the tag of the page, Type title and the word in quotation. **“title:jazz”**
 * To exclude or include a certain type of host from the search, put **+** or **–** and type **host:** and the host edu, com, org, gov.
 * **“jazz music” + host:edu** includes educational sites **jazz – host:com** excludes all the commercial sites from the search.
 * To find a specific subject under a special host name, type the **host:** name and subject. **host:pbs.org “jazz music”** finds the jazz music in pbs web site. **Host:wpunj.edu “graduate school”** find every page in William Paterson University related with graduate school.

(taken from http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/Information_Literacy/IFO0202.pdf)