Searching the Internet Created for School District 45, DuPage County

Searching the Internet is not Surfing the Internet!

“Not all the information that exists in the world is on the Internet AND Not all the information on the Internet is accurate” (Kotsch 2004). Search Smart…

An hour on the web might not answer a question that you could find in a few minutes by using a reference book. Use the best resource for the job!

Search Strategies  How do you find what you need?  Libraries and department stores are planned.  But, no one is in charge of organizing the Internet.  So….well prepared searches will eliminate useless hits and wasted time.

Search Strategies  Use keywords  Be specific – you’ll get better results  Use correct spelling  Punctuation doesn’t matter  However “” quotation marks do matter (see later)  Keep it simple  Describe what you need in as few words as possible  Google is limited to 10 words, anything after 10 is ignored  Use words that are most likely to appear on the website  “headache” instead of “my head hurts”  Some websites allow the use of  Wildcard searches (see next few slides)  Boolean operators (see next few slides)

Phrase Search (“”)  Using quotation marks will bring back the exact phrase you are searching  Be careful when using quotation marks  “Robert Lee” will miss anything with Robert E Lee Search Strategies Search Strategies

The minus sign (-)  Used immediately before a word will exclude it from your results  Bears –Chicago  Don’t confuse the minus sign (-) with a hyphen (-)  Anti-virus software Search Strategies Search Strategies

Search within a specific website  site:edu (colleges & universities)  site:gov (government agencies)  site:org (organizations)  Use this to limit your search results to certain types of websites Search Strategies Search Strategies

Fill in the blanks (*)  Also called the Wildcard search (see later)  The * is used to replace any unknown words in the search phrase  Coca-Cola was invented in * by *  Great to use when you only know part of a song title or the lyrics Search Strategies Search Strategies

Fill in the blanks (*) Search Strategies Search Strategies

Wildcard Searches (*)  A special symbol (*) (Shift+8) which allows you to search for several words that begin the same but may have different endings. Educat* Educator Educate Education Educational Google uses the * for the “Fill in the blank search”

Boolean Operators  Words such as AND, OR, and NOT that are used to combine terms to broaden or narrow the results of a search.

Broaden a search (OR)  Using the word or will broaden a search  Use or if two words may be used interchangeably colleges or universities collegesuniversities

Narrow a search (AND)  Using and will only provide hits for sites which have BOTH of the words. heart and disease

Narrow a search (NOT)  Using not narrows the search by telling the search engine to exclude certain words  You can also use a minus sign - schools not middle schools -middle

Results…  The best results will appear on the first page or two of hits  No two search engines are alike. Try another search engine, or rephrase your keywords to get better results.

Search Engines And many others….

Advanced Search Strategies define Provides a definition of a word define:abundent related Finds pages related to or similar to the selected site related: filetype Searches for a particular kind of file  (ppt) PowerPoint  (doc) Word filetype:doc (you Might use)

Let’s Practice Together Search Term # of Results dogs collie border collie “border collie” “border collie” site:org “border collie” site:org -wikipedia “border collie” site:org –wikipedia rescue “border collie” site:org –wikipedia “rescue”

Class Activity “The Game” (Watkins 2006, 2008)  See “The Google Game” Handout on the Internet Safety Page

Works Cited  Google search basics: Basic search help n&answer= n&answer= n&answer=  Google search basics: More search help er= er= er=  Kotsch. (2004) Preparing to Search the Internet.  Watkins, K. (2008). Return of the Google game. School Library Journal, 54 (5),  Watkins, K. (2006). The Google game. School Library Journal, 52 (1),