Search Tools

Learn about:

Parts of a Search Tool.

How Search Tool databases are created.

The differences between Search Tools.

“Search Tools” is the first in a series of Web Library modules about using the Internet.

Tools and Topics

The content of this module will contain a model Internet search that parallels information in the video. As we work through these slides we will explore different Search Tools in an effort to find one that meets our needs.

Before we start our search we will choose a topic.

Tools and Topics

The topic we will choose to research in these modules is “pollution”.

You may choose your own topic if you prefer. Pause the RealPlayer as you do your research

or

follow along as we do ours.

More information to support this video can be found Ask Scott.

Search Tools

There are many web sites that list Search Tools.

Check the site Search Tools shown above.

Choose a Search Tool

We will begin our search at www.google.com. We type “pollution” in the type-in box and then click on the Google Search button or hit Enter.

World Wide Web.

The Spider searches the WWW and adds sites to the Database.

The Database is kept filled and updated by the Spider.

The Interface views the selected Database items.

Parts of the Internet Search Tool

Spider Search Results

Google.com returns over 3 million results. Check www. google.com to find out how this tool searches the web.NOTE: We will use the term Spider throughout the slides in this module. Even though Spider and Robot are used interchangeably, it is confusing to mix terms when teaching new users. Consistency is important!

How Spiders Search

Understanding how Spiders do their searches helps the learner/researcher understand the results of the search.

Google Spiders search the Internet on their own. This provides a larger database than is created by Spiders that search only submitted pages.

Comparing Search Tools

A “pollution” search on Excite yields less results than that of Google.

A closer look at the two search lists will reveal that the suggested Web sites are also different.

This is true because Google and Excite use different spiders to do their data collections.

Dead End Searches

Sometimes pages become either temporarily or permanently inactive.

Internet Explorer inactive page.

Netscape inactive page.

Do Your Homework

As we start our search for “pollution” we will consider several different Search Tools.

We will want to answer the following questions:

1. Which kind of Search Tool should we use?2. How useful are the first couple of listings?3. How many dead links do we find?4. Does the search style match our

preferences?5. Does the search page design appeal to us?

General Word Searches

“Pollution” is a general word. As we found out in the previous results from Google and Excite, a general search can provide us with many choices.

At this time we want to keep our search of “pollution” sites general. We will continue to look at different Search Tools to see if we can find one that will help us narrow our search.

Directory Format

Main Category (Pollution)

Subcategory(Water Pollution)

Sub-subcategory (Lakes, Rivers, Drinking Water, Water Filters, etc.)

Subcategory (Air Pollution)

Sub-subcategory (Automobile Exhaust, Power Plants, etc.)

Type-in Box

Subcategories

A Directory

How Search Tools Work

The World Wide Web

Database

Search Tool

Database

Search Tool

Database

Search Tool

yahoo.com

about.com

looksmart.com

askjeeves.com

Examples of Directories

Directory Results

Search for pollution Search

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Subcategories

C A T E G O R Y

Narrowing the Search

The human developed directories we tried did not return as many results as our search of Spider generated data from Google and Excite.

Besides the general directories we cited, there are also special focus directories such as those that collect data on web sites about movies or medicine.

Before we narrow our search we will explore some of the other types of Search Tools available.

AltaVista Uses a Spider Search

AltaVista Search

AltaVista searches the Web for words. Notice here that the results of our search for “pollution” give us a word count of 2.7 million.

Lycos Searches Selected Words

1,783,169 WEB SITES

Many Results

Spider Search Tools

Disadvantage: These tools find many more sites than can be explored. It would probably be best to start our search with a directory.

Advantage: These tools can goout and search for deadlinks and new links on aregular basis. Thismeans constantlyupdated link lists.

Northern Light

Why Use Spiders?

These tools:

Have a much wider selection.

Give better results for a specific question.

Help find topics not listed in directories.

Our topic is very general at this point. Do we need the advantages of a Spider tool at this point in our search? Should we look for a tool that will better focus our search?

Meta-search Tools

metacrawler.com

mamma.com

Meta-search Results

DOGPILE is another meta-search tool. Notice when “pollution” was entered, dogpile.com found its own preferred results in various other search tools.

Comparing Results

Human created search tools or directories provide us with a fewer results and subcategory ideas.

Spider created search tools provide us with many results and a fairly up-to-date list.

Meta-search tools find and organize a list of results from many different search tools.

What’s Next?

After comparing the different Search Tools we will decide to use a directory for our initial general topic search.

The second NetSearch module is entitled Directories. We will continueour search and choose a specific type of pollutionin the next module.