Tips for Doing Searches on the Web

Tips for Doing Searches on the Web
I have found the tips outlined in Dr. Kathleen King’s PowerPoint presentation entitled Searching, Searches and Search Engines Comparisons to be very helpful in doing searches utilizing search engines.
The tips are as follows:
1) Know where to look first.
Do you want information on a person, company, product, service or finding a job?
Do you need to use a database which has specific information or a regular search engine? For example, in looking for a job, you can use a database such as monster.com which is specifically designed for that purpose.
2) Fine tune your key words.
Be as specific as possible.
3) Refine your search.
Read help files and utilize available search refining options.
Learn to exclude using the Boolean “NOT”.
4) Query by example.
Many search engine sites offer this feature or use “find similar sites”.
5) Anticipate the answers.
Before searching, imagine what the ideal page would look like. What words or phrases would the title contain? Use these words or phrases when entering your query.

Here are some other sites which provide additional helpful hints in doing searches on the Web. The first is a tutorial on doing searches on the Internet by the library at the University of California – Berkeley – http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Strategies.html. Wendy Boswell at About.com offers some tips at http://websearch.about.com/. Lastly, for your reading pleasure, here is an interesting article entitled The Benefits and Drawbacks of the Internet as a Research Source located on the website, Article Garden at http://www.articlegarden.com/Article/Benefits-and-Drawbacks-of-the-Internet-as-a-Research-Source/5346