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Search strategy. basic search strategy. Identify the important concepts of your search. Choose the keywords that describe these concepts. Determine whether there are synonyms, related terms, or other variations of the keywords that should be included.
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basic search strategy • Identify the important concepts of your search. • Choose the keywords that describe these concepts. • Determine whether there are synonyms, related terms, or other variations of the keywords that should be included. • Determine which search features may apply, including truncation, proximity operators, Boolean operators, and so forth.. • Choose a search engine. • Read the search instructions on the search engine's home page. Look for sections entitled "Help," "Advanced Search," "Frequently Asked Questions," and so forth.
Create a search expression, using syntax, which is appropriate for the search engine. • Evaluate the results. How many hits were returned? Were the results relevant to your query? • Modify your search if needed. Go back to steps 2-4 and revise your query accordingly. • Try the same search in a different search engine, following steps 5-9 above
Queries • Queries are the combination of words and operators that we enter into search box of search engines and directories to show it what is our intention from the search.
Directory Search tool created by editors or trained researchers who categorize or classify Web sites by subject. An index of web pages, compiled by people and organized more by topic or theme. Examples :Yahoo, About.
Search engine While the term more properly refers to any software used to search any database, on the Internet the phrase usually refers to the very large databases of Web sites that are automatically built by robots. These Internet search engines use a software robot (or spider) that seeks out and index the words on Web pages. Examples:Alta vista , Google, Fast All the Web ,Askjeeves , Inktomi
Meta search engine A search engine that gets listings from two or more other search engines, rather than through its own efforts.
yellow page&white page White page: Search for Name, Business, Address or Phone Number. Yellow page: a telephone directory or section of a directory (usually printed on yellow paper) where business products and services are listed alphabetically by field along with classified advertising
BOOLEAN AND Connecting search terms with AND tells the search engine to retrieve web pages containing ALL the keywords. EXAMPLE:EducationANDComputer Computer Education
BOOLEAN OR Linking search terms with OR tells the search engine to retrieve web pages containing ANY and ALL keywords. Example:HIVOR AIDS AIDS HIV
BOOLEAN NOT AND NOT tells the search engine to retrieve web pages containing one keyword but not the other. Example:Breast cancer NOTmale Breast cancer male
Operator: WITHIN • Explanation: These words separated by n or less by a specified distance in any orderExample: computer W/3 careers
NEAR • similar to AND, only both terms have to be within • a specified word distance from one another in order to • be scored as a result
Even fewer search engines accept ADJ (adjacent to). ADJ works as a phrase except that the two terms, which must appear adjacent to each other in the webpage, can appear in any order. EXAMPLE: Ernest ADJ Hemingway
IMPLIED BOOLEAN: PLUS & MINUS In many search engines, the plus and minus symbols can be used as alternatives to full Boolean AND and AND NOT. The plus sign (+) is the equivalent of AND, and the minus sign (-) is the equivalent of AND NOT. There is no space between the plus or minus sign and the keyword
PHRASE SEARCHING Surrounding a group of words with double quotes tells the search engine to only retrieve documents in which those words appear side-by-side. Phrase searching is a powerful search technique for significantly narrowing your search results, and it should be used as often as possible. Example: “healthy behavior”
Title search Field searching is one of the most effective techniques for narrowing results and getting the most relevant websites listed at the top of the results page. For example: title:health promotion
DOMAIN SEARCH DOMAINSEARCH The DOMAIN SEARCH allows you to limit results to certain domains such as websites from the United Kingdom (.uk), educational institutions (.edu), or government sites (.gov). For example: domain:edu and "lung cancer" and smok*
Com for commercialnet for networks, but can be used by anyoneedu for U.S. higher educationorg for other organizations, but can be used by anyonemil for U.S. militarygov for governmentint for international organizations established by treaties
URL SEARCH The URL SEARCH limits search results to web pages where the keyword appears in the URL or website address. A URL search can narrow very broad results to web pages devoted to the keyword topic. For example: url:health
LINK SEARCH Use the LINK SEARCH when you want to know what websites are linked to a particular site of interest. For example, if you have a home page and you are wondering if anyone has put a link to your page on their website, use the Link search. Researchers use link searches for conducting backward citations For example:link:www.who.int
Using Wildcard Symbols • Using wildcard symbols will allow you to replace any unknown character in a word with a symbol such as an asterisk "*" or a "?". The database will then run the search for you and locate all word possibilities. For example:wom?n. This will locate both the term women and the term woman.
Using Truncation The *, known as a wildcard character, is useful in any search to allow for different endings of a word. For example:communicat* will retrieve communicate, communicates, communicated, communicating and communication.
STEP 1:STATE WHAT YOU WANTTO FIND STEP 2:IDENTIFY KEYWORDS STEP 3:SELECT SYNONYMS ANDVARIANT WORD FORMS For example: method way technique
STEP 4: COMBINE SYNONYMS, KEYWORDS, AND VARIANT WORD FORMS For example: (popular or common or favorite) (methods or method or ways or way or techniques or technique) STEP 5: CHECK YOUR SPELLING
Evaluating Web Pages: • 1.What can the URL tell you? *Is it somebody'spersonal page? *What type ofdomaindoes it come from ? (educational, nonprofit, commercial, government, etc.) *Is it published by an entity that makessense?Who "published" the page?
2.Scan the perimeter of the page, looking for answers to these questions: *Who wrote the page? *Is the page dated? Is it current enough? *What are the author's credentials on this subject?
3. Look for indicators of quality information: *Are sources documented with footnotes or links? *If reproduced information (from another source), is it complete, not altered, not fake or forged? *Are there links to other resources on the topic?
4. What do others say? *Who links to the page? *Is the page listed in one or more reputable directories or pages? *What do others say about the author or responsible authoring body?
5. Does it all add up? *Why was the page put on the web? *Might it be ironic? Satire or parody? *Is this as credible and useful as the resources (books, journal articles, etc.) available in print or online through the library?
