How to Search the Web


Most Internet search sites are actually search engines. They employ special software programs (called spiders or crawlers) to roam the Web automatically, feeding what they find back to a massive bank of computers. These computers then build giant indexes of the Web, hundreds of millions of pages strong.

When you perform a search at a search engine site, your query is sent to the search engine's index. (You never actually search the Web itself, you only search the index that was created by the spiders crawling the Web.) The search engine then creates a list of pages in its index that match, to one degree or another, the query you entered.

Constructing a Query

Almost every search site on the Web contains two basic components a search box and a search button. You enter your query one or more keywords that describe what you're looking for into the search box, and then click the Search button (or press the Enter key) to start the search. The search site then returns a list of Web pages that match your query; click any link to go directly to the page in question.

How you construct your query determines how relevant the results will be that you receive. It's important to focus on the keywords you use, because the search sites look for these words when they process your query. Your keywords are compared to the Web pages the search site knows about; the more keywords found on a Web page, the better the match.

You should choose keywords that best describe the information you're looking for using as many keywords as you need. Don't be afraid of using too many keywords; in fact, using too few keywords is a common fault of many novice searchers. The more words you use, the better idea the search engine has of what you're looking for.

Using Wildcards

But what if you're not quite sure which word to use? For example, would the best results come from looking for auto, automobile, or automotive? Many search sites let you use wildcards to "stand in" for parts of a word that you're not quite sure about.

In most instances, the asterisk character (*) is used as a wildcard to match any character or group of characters, from its particular position in the word to the end of that word. So, in the previous example, entering auto* would return all three words auto, automobile, and automotive (as well as automatic, autocratic, and any other word that starts with "auto").

Searching for an Exact Phrase

Normally, a multiple-word query searches for Web pages that include all the words in the query, in any order. There is a way, however, to search for an exact phrase. All you have to do is enclose the phrase in quotation marks.

For example, to search for Monty Python, don't enter Monty Python. Instead, enter "Monty Python" surrounded by quotation marks. Putting the phrase between quotation marks returns results about the comedy troupe, while entering the words individually returns pages about snakes and guys named Monty.



Absolute Beginner's Guide to Computer Basics
Absolute Beginners Guide to Computer Basics (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0789731754
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 253

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