Of Needles and Haystacks: Successful Internet Searching – Part I

To try and attract just the information you want means appreciating 4 broad areas:

1. How to construct a question
2. How search engines work
3. How to evaluate what you find
4. When to call it quits, (or not even bother starting!) and look for an alternative source for your information.

In this two part series on Internet Searching, we will look first at how to construct a question and how search engines work. Then our second article will then pick up on how to evaluate your findings and when to look for alternative information sources.

How To Construct A Question

It is often said the answer is only as good as the question, and this is never truer than in Internet Searching.

FORMULATING THE SEARCH QUERY

– Make a list of RELEVANT questions
– Extract KEY PHRASES and KEYWORDS

START BIG AND BROAD (THEN NARROW CAUTIOUSLY)

Effective searching requires a balance between a broad reach and a careful aim. The searcher must cast a net far enough to capture the most important information, and then, once safely contained, must cull the results so that only the best information remains. This is quite the opposite of using a library catalog where all the information is already structured within a preset group of subject headings and all you have to do is identify the appropriate subject.

Too many searchers narrow their search prematurely, thereby condemning themselves to the boundaries and ideas of their prior knowledge.

After you have conducted several browsing searches, you may begin to focus your search more sharply by adding key words to your search in order to limit hits to pages distinctly relevant to your inquiry.

Careful selection and addition of key words which are discriminating, distinguishing and distinctive, puts the spotlight on just those discrete pages which match your interests. Your key words differentiate, separate, and reserve only the best pages.

How different would your results be with each of the following words?
– accounting
– auditing
– internal audit

The more you particularize your search, the better your results. Adding particulars and specifics excludes all pages which do not contain those items. The advantage is sharp focus. The danger is bypassing, missing or overlooking key data.

Sometimes it pays to alternate between narrowing and broadening. After zeroing in with some particulars, zoom back out and try some different particulars.

BROWSE BEFORE GRAZING

Early search efforts are meant to provide an overview of the information landscape relevant to the investigation at hand, much like petroleum prospectors flying over a region and noting the terrain, seeking convergence (a combination of geological elements in one location which hints at the presence of oil).

While it is tempting to start right off opening pages and looking for information, it is more effective to wait until you have scanned the brief descriptions most search engines provide for the hits. Scanning the top 100 hits provides a basis for revising the original search to accomplish two goals:

1. Exclude whole categories of irrelevant sites
2. Target more directly those pages and sites most likely to deliver a great return.

How Search Engines Work: The Questioning Features of Search Engines

SYNTAX

The more powerful the search engine, the more important the syntax – the rules governing how you enter your search query. Because few people stop to read and learn these rules, they end up with crude and clumsy searches.

For example, some search engines care about CAPITAL LETTERS and punctuation. Others ignore them both. If your search is for information on Washington, D.C. and you use “WASHINGTON, DC”, you may achieve no “hits” with one search engine and thousands with another.

Another example: when you want an exact phrase such as “HIGH NET WORTH INDIVIDUALS”, some search engines require quotation marks around the words which belong together, while others do not care.

SEARCH LOGIC

Search logic is also important. For example some search engines support Boolean searches, the use of the words AND, OR and NOT, to target just certain pages.

“San Francisco” AND “growth corridors” gives you all the Web pages that contain both the city and information on areas of business growth.

You can usually find the syntax and the instructions for logical searching for any search engine in the Help pages. Extremely useful are sites that list and compare the syntax and logic of the search engines such as Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/ataglance.html)

SEARCH LIMITERS

As Info-Glut has grown to be more and more of a problem, the search engines have competed fiercely to offer the best tools to support you in your sorting and sifting, and yet many folks ignore these powerful extra tools and features.

HotBot’s Super Search allows you to request particular domains, particular dates, particular levels of a Web site, particular countries of origin, particular types of files and as many as 100 results at a time. These can be very helpful search features. Google allows you to search for just images and to view those forever downloading pdf files as instantly loading html.

If you want to eliminate most commercial sites, you might limit your search to .gov or .org, for example.

Power search techniques explore all of the features of a chosen search engine in advance of real searching in order to apply these extra tools with skill when they are needed.

With experience you’ll get a feel for which search engine delivers consistently for your type of enquiries.

Learn it.

Bookmark it.

Stay with that search engine until someone invents a faster and better information trap (which may not take long).

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Copyright 2004, RAN ONE Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from www.ranone.com.