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G042 - Lecture 09 Commencing Task A. Mr C Johnston ICT Teacher www.computechedu.co.uk. Session Objectives. Understand what a search engine is and how they help us locate information on the world wide web,
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G042 - Lecture 09Commencing Task A Mr C Johnston ICT Teacher www.computechedu.co.uk
Session Objectives • Understand what a search engine is and how they help us locate information on the world wide web, • Know a range of different search techniques which can be used to get information from search engines, • Use some basic techniques acquire some information for your investigation.
What Is A Search Engine • Manual navigation of millions of web pages and thousands of newsgroups is impractical, • A search engine is a catalogue of web pages, • It stores details about site which searches can be carried out on, • A search engine therefore is a user interface which allows you to search a huge database containing lists of web pages and newsgroups, • Search Engines comprise of three main components: • Sourcing the data • Indexing and creating the database • The search engine application
Database Queried Search Engine Database Search Engine Request Query Results SearchResultsReturned Machine With Internet Connection Search Engine Web server Search Engine Application • Main user interface is written in HTML with a box for users to enter a search string into, • When the search button is pressed the search string is processed by a computer programming language and a search is executed on the search engine database, • The results are generated and displayed in a dynamic HTML page using a mixture of programming code and HTML.
Search Engine Facilities • Standard search box allows you to enter phrase words • Advance search facilities allows you to have more control over your searches by customising the search string using a user interface • Create your own customised searches within the standard search box using Boolean operators – AND, OR, NOT
Selection of Search Engines • There are a number of different search engines available – some better than others! • Most allow you to carry out searches using the tips on the last slide, others however are more intelligent and you just enter a question and the engine attempts to answer it, • Below is a list of common search engine: • www.google.co.uk • www.yahoo.co.uk • www.msn.co.uk • www.ask.co.uk • www.lycos.co.uk • www.excite.co.uk
The Task • Using key words within the standard search box find websites which give you information to assist with your investigation HINT – you have already written down in your introduction what you are trying to find! • Carry out similar searches in different search engines • Take screen shot evidence clearly showing search terms and the results generated… • Once you have carried out a variety of searches in different engines summarise your findings and evaluate the methods used - how you could improve your searches..
Evaluating Results • Number of results • Quality of results in terms of reliability, validity and bias, • When thinking about websites consider: • the URL, for example: .gov, .ac, .ed, .org, .co, .com, .sch • endorsements, e.g. NgFL, • the date of the last update, • the author, • advertisements, • links to and from the website
Further Reading… Guide to Google searching • http://www.google.com/support/websearch/?ctx=web Guide to searching on Yahoo • http://help.yahoo.com/l/uk/yahoo/search/basics/ Guide to searching with Ask • http://help.uk.ask.com/en/docs/about/help_central.shtml Guide to searching with MSN • http://help.live.com/help.aspx?project=wl_searchv1&market=en-GB&querytype=keyword&query=redliub&tmt=&domain=search.live.com:80 General searching tips • http://www.bbctraining.com/pdfs/internet_res.pdf • http://www.computechedu.co.uk/resources/agce/Unit03/lectures/Lec02SearchEngines.ppt