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As a youngster, I was fortunate in my search for facts and knowledge. Although my parents did not have much in the way of formal education, our home always had books. Growing up in an urban setting, it was a short walk to the city's public library. Once I learned the Dewey Decimal system, a world of wonder was opened to me. Today, sitting before a PC in my den, an even broader vista is open to me via the new Delphic Oracle, Google, and other search engines. As with any tool, it behooves us to learn some rudiments for its use. The following is a quote from the website, Wikipedia (more detailed information is available at the site). A search engine is a program designed to help find information stored on a computer system such as the World Wide Web , inside a corporate or proprietary network, or a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase ) and retrieves a list of references that match those criteria. It is how we compose those words and phrases that make all the difference in search results. Different search engines have pros and cons with respect to their results. Google, by far, is the most popular and broadest search engine. As it has ripened with age, a plethora of categories has sharpened its "smarts." Visiting Google's home page, you are presented with the categories Web, Images, Groups, News, Froogle (play on the word frugal, for bargain hunting), and Maps. Clicking on the last entry, more, opens a slew of further categories. The biggest hurdle to overcome in a search is the overabundance of "hits." Entering the single word, cards , recently resulted in 845 million possibilities. Modifying the search to baseball cards reduced the hits to 42.2 million. Adding the word, Yankees, brought the number of hits down to 7.84 million entries. Although Google does a great job in assigning relevancy, if your needs are specific there are ways to restrict search results. Boolean Operators (from the mathematician George Boole's philosophy of logic) consists of the simple conjunctions AND, OR, and NOT. Using AND tells the search engine that both words or phrases must be in the title or text of the result. OR implies that either word or phrase satisfies the criterion; NOT excludes entries containing the word or phrase. To insure that you are employing a phrase, place quotation marks around it; for example, "War of 1812." In many instances, a + or – (plus or minus) may be used instead of AND and NOT, for less keystrokes. A metasearch engine (also referred to as a meta-crawler) is software that combines search engines. An example is Dogpile.com. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the ranking of search results. Abuse of SEO is also known as circular SEO; creating artificial links in order to upgrade a website's relevancy. A matter of ethics, active forums are present on the topic. Commercial enterprises exist to improve a site's ranking for a fee. Some
representative web sites for information on search engines: www.windweaver.com/searchtools.htm An excellent Web page (posted by Webmaster Nancy at the suggestion of Dave Stewart) can be found at http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html . This is a Cheat Sheet for the Google Search Engine. I suggest you print it and keep it handy. Popular Web search sites: (Ask Jeeves) Another AltaVista site has a very handy feature; babelfish.altavista.com – it quickly and easily translates phrases between some popular languages. Additionally, just about every newspaper and magazine has its own web site. A feature of every Internet browser is to Bookmark or save Favorites for a quick return to previously visited web sites. In Microsoft's Internet Explorer, under the Favorites menu item, there are two choices: Add to Favorites and Organize Favorites. As your list of Favorites grows (and it will!), it can be difficult to pinpoint the one you want. You can sort the list alphabetically by opening the list via a click on the menu item Favorites (not the Favorites button), right click on a link, and choose Sort by Name. This can help early in the game, but as time goes on it makes more sense to use the Organize feature. Here you can create folders and subfolders and move links into them as appropriate. For example, I created folders named Info&Tips, Magazines, Often (location of the mug web site), and Shopping (home of price comparison web sites and frequently used catalogs). Infrequently used sites are allowed to be added to the list outside of the folders, in alphabetical order. As the Internet opens your world to a universe of wonders, it can also unlock the door for malevolent software. Before you venture into such vast cyberspace, make sure you are protected by updated antivirus and firewall programs. Beware the "free lunch" of games, puzzles, and provocative photos; they often come with a price you do not want to pay.
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