Search Strings: Becoming a Power Searcher

1. Search Strings: Becoming a Power Searcher

2. Assume your teacher assigns you a project • You need to prepare a short presentation on chemical compounds. • Go to Google and do a search. • Write the word(s) you used to search on the sheets • Stop at the Google results screen… Worksheet

3. Analysis • How many words did you use in your search? • One (You need more skills) • Two (You need some help) • Three (Good start) • More than three (Great start to searching!)

4. Analysis… • How many results did you get? (look at the top of the results page for “Results 1 - 10 of about 2,450,000 for canola” line) 1. >10 000 000 2. Between 5 000 000 and 10 000 000 3. Between 1 000 000 and 5000 000 4. Between 100 000 and 1 000 000 5. <100 000 (Best!)

5. More analysis… • Did you use advanced search? 1. Yes 2. No 3. I don’t know what that is

6. Search Tools Worksheet Choosing the best weapon for searching!

7. What tools search the “Visible Web”? • Meta-search engines e.g dogpile • Search engines other than Google • Wikipedia - use for keywords • Invisible Web…you need a database or specialized search engine for this! Worksheet

8. Meta-Search Engines • Browsers that search using more than one search engine. Examples: www.dogpile.com http://www.kartoo.com (visual) www.clusty.com Worksheet

10. What in the world are Nyms? • Hyponyms • Words that focus a search • Hypernyms • Words that are more general Worksheet

11. Part Two: How DO I become a Power Searcher? • Before you do any kind of a search it is a good idea to come up with strong KEYWORDS; some hypernyms (general) and some hyponyms (specific) • Write down some hyponyms and hypernyms that would be useful for your compound. Worksheet

12. How do I do that if I don’t know anything about my topic? Go to a general resource such as; • A Directory or Portal on the topic • Do a quick Google search…mine the results list • Try Wikipedia • Try an encyclopedia (on-line or hard copy) • Or a book (search the index in the back) This pre-searching will help!

13. Think about words that are examples of what you want in a PERFECT website

14. Think of searching as using a zoom lens • Use more search terms to get fewer but better quality results. • Add more words and restrictions at first.

15. Boolean Operators…the grammar of search engines • AND • Makes search more specific • OR • Broadens your search • NOT • Narrows your search by excluding some words Worksheet

16. An example using “AND” or + Everyone stand up… Remaining standing if… • you are wearing blue jeans • you are wearing blue jeans AND have blond hair • you are wearing blue jeans AND you have blond hair AND are a girl. • Do we get more or fewer results with AND? Worksheet

17. How does it look in Google? “blue jeans” AND “ blond hair” AND girl Or “blue jeans” +”blond hair” +girl NO SPACE HERE

18. An example using OR Stand up if • You are wearing blue jeans. • You are wearing blue jeans OR black pants. • You are wearing blue jeans OR black pants OR running shoes. • Do we get more or fewer using OR? Worksheet

19. Symbolic “OR” Google uses the vertical bar “|” To get this symbol use Shift \ E.g. Honda OR Toyota Honda | Toyota

20. What if we combine the two? Stand up if… you arewearing blue jeans OR black pants AND running shoes

21. An example using NOT (-) Stand up if • You are wearing blue pants. • You are wearing blue pants NOT jeans. • You are wearing running shoes AND blue pants NOT jeans. Do we get more or fewer results using NOT? Worksheet

22. What does this one look like in Google? “running shoes” + “blue pants” -jeans

23. The ideal website is like one person in the room…we should be able to create keywords that select only that one great site. You just have to know which terms to use.

24. ~ What does the “tilde” do? • Use this when you are not sure what synonyms there are for keywords you are using. • E.g. “death penalty” OR “capital punishment” • ~”death penalty” - looks for synonyms Worksheet

25. Summary of Boolean Operators • “AND” or + (hyponym) • Limits your search; finds sites that has both terms somewhere e.g. recipes +Japan +rice • “OR” (hypernym) • Captures synonyms e.g. car or automobile • Searches for any of the terms • “NOT” or – (hyponym) • Eliminates possibilities that you suspect will cause problems E.g. Martin Luther NOT King -Eagles –Philadelphia –football

26. What is a Search string? • It is a list of all of the search terms and syntax (grammar) that focuses your search and limits your results list. • It will allow you to find websites again. • It shows the thought process you went through to find a website. Worksheet

27. Say you are going to buy a dog • You love the Chihuahua breed. • Before you buy, you want to investigate to see if the breed has any big health issues.

28. What are the major health issues affecting Chihuahuas? • Use most important words first. Dogs (too hypernymish!!!) Chihuahua…oh but don’t capitalize it…that would be the city in Mexico. How many “hits” do you get? To make sure there are no synonyms or variations…let’s use the tilde~…it tells Google to get all synonyms. ~chihuahua Now how many “hits” do you get? Worksheet

29. What are the major health issues affecting Chihuahuas? 2. Second most important word is… Health…so ~chihuahua +health How many hits do you get? Worksheet

30. What are the major health issues affecting Chihuahuas? 3. What if we think we might be interested in Poodles as well? Use OR… ~chihuahua OR poodle +health Will this mean more or less hits? Worksheet

31. What are the major health issues affecting Chihuahuas? 4. Let’s be more specific. We don’t want health. We want health problems. Problems is vague, health is vague. Together they are specific! But use quotation marks! ~chihuahua OR poodle +”health problems” Worksheet

32. What are the major health issues affecting Chihuahuas? 5. We decide we want to focus in on any genetic health problems. We want any forms of the word genetic. ~chihuahua OR poodle +”health problems” +genetic How many hits did you get now? Worksheet

33. What are the major health issues affecting Chihuahuas? 6. A lot of sites talk about “teacup” chihuahuas. We want the regular. (This is called “mining the results list”.) ~chihuahua OR poodle +”health problems” +genetic -teacup Using the minus sign is how Google does the NOT command. Make sure the - sign touches the word you want excluded. How many hits did you get now? Worksheet

34. What are the major health issues affecting Chihuahuas? 7. Some of the sites listed are trying to sell us a dog. Let’s get rid of them. ~chihuahua OR poodle +”health problems” +genetic -teacup -book -sale Using the minus sign is how Google does the NOT command. Make sure the - sign touches the word you want excluded. Google always gives you variations…the word “book” gives you book or books How many hits did you get now? Worksheet

35. 8. Use the advanced search!

36. Other tricks to help our search 9. Use allintitle: intitle: allintext: intext: to make Google look for keywords in website title or the text. Maybe we want only information from or by breeders. chihuahua +”health problems” +~genetic -teacup -book -sale intitle:breeder How many hits now? Worksheet

37. Other tricks to help our search 10. Domains indicate the “nature” of the group that posted the website. The best are .gov or .edu or k12. Some .org sites are okay if the organization is a credible one. Be skeptical of .com and .net…they are personal or commercial. Add site:edu or exclude a type of site -site:com Worksheet

38. Quality of domains

39. Other tricks to help our search 11. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is the site address. http:// transfer protocol www.website -name of website .ca.edu -can include country and domain /filename/subfilename /filetype -could be ppt; pdf; doc Analyze site URLs for certain phrases or words. Use inurl: or allinurl: to ask for certain words in a URL. inurl:ca Worksheet

40. Other tricks to help our search 12. Find similar sites by using the link in Google under good websites in the list of results. Cached means old captured copies of the site. Worksheet

41. Other tricks to help our search 13. Use Google advanced drop down to search for sites by date. Warning is that Google still has trouble determining valuable dates (like date sites posted or updated) from dates minor changes were made. Worksheet

42. Other tricks to help our search 14. Find out what other sites link to sites you want to use by adding in another search link: _____URL______ . The results list will include every site that links to this site. It is useful to browse this list to see if any strange sites link to it. Worksheet

43. Other tricks to help our search 15. Search by filetype if you want only one kind, e.g. powerpoint presentations or pdf’s. filetype:ppt or pdf or doc Worksheet

44. 16. Last of the tricks • Need articles? Add the word article • (better yet go to one of the databases!) • Need pros and cons? Add “pros and cons” • Costs and benefits? Add “costs and benefits” Worksheet

45. 17. *Wildcard* searching Google offers proximity searching: *Is a wildcard • To find a missing word in a phrase, simply substitute an asterisk. For example, Coca-cola was invented by * You can search for phrases with or without quotation marks. • “Top 100 famous women *” • You can use as many asterisks in a search phrase as you'd like. "Remember, remember the * of *." You can also use more than one asterisk if you'd like to have more than one wildcard in a row. Put a space betweeneach asterisk. Worksheet

46. Here is the Search string… What are the major health issues affecting Chihuahuas? ~Chihuahuas 1,400,000 +health 1,130,000 +”health problems” 62,900 -mexico 44,600 -amazon 42,300 -~book 25,100 -sale 17,000 -site:com 451

47. Create your own search string • Create a search string for your compound: Complete the sheet to show your search string and results.

48. Play when you search… • The first thing you'd notice by watching over the shoulder of professional librarians: • They don't search once, perfectly. They search over and over, circling the prey. • Remove one restriction at a time. (That's the essence of troubleshooting.) Try being more restrictive here, and less there. Then try it the other way around.

49. Don't scroll: there's no scrolling on the Web • If you turn up hundreds or thousands of hits, scrolling through them is unlikely to find the one you want. • Better to refine your search.

50. Use what you learn • As you search, whenever you see a fact in the results list or on a page, use it. Go back to the search engine and throw that fact onto the search. • This is called “mining the search results list”. • Learn new facts to hypo your search and learn what you can exclude