Internet- SPECIAL SEARCH TECHNIQUES

SPECIAL SEARCH TECHNIQUES

Searching for information on web can be done by using keyword, phrases, conjunction words(And, Or, Not) and symbols(+, -). The words or phrases that search engines use to find relevant information are called keywords. These conjunction words and symbols can be used to make search more specific. The more precise your keywords are, greater is your chance of finding the required information.

You can also do simple keyword search by using conjunction words (  these conjunction words are known as Boolean operators ). Conjunction words used are 'AND,' 'OR,' 'NOT'  and symbols like quotation marks (“ ”) (+) (-).

Note – Instead of Boolean Operators the teacher can use the simple word conjunction words AND(+), OR and NOT(-) are used for searching information.

• AND (+) means that all the terms you specify must be included in the search. For example, if keywords Artists Singers AND dancers or Artists Singers + dancers search result will show the pages containing both these words.

• OR means that at least one of the terms you specify must be included in the search. For example, for Birds species Asia OR Europe, search engine will show the pages containing at least one of these phrases.
• NOT (-) means that the terms you specify must not appear in the search result. For example, if you type “Citrus Plants -Lemon” in the search box, pages containing the word ‘Citrus Plants’ must appear but not the word 'Lemon'.
• Quotation Marks (“ ”) is for searching for a precise phrase, that is, for "Citrus  Plants”, the search engine would retrieve pages containing the exact words that you have typed.

Stop Words

Stop words are words that many search engines ignore while searching text and titles on the web. These are extremely common words which are ignored in order to increase the speed of the search results or to save the disk space. Some of the common stop words are:

a, about, an, and, above, are, also, as, after, at, be, been, before, both, by, end, ever, eg, for, from, go, get, given, how, has, he, her, i, in, is, it, know, let, like, many, may, me, no, none, not, of, over, out, on, or, please, right, say, see, she, so, soon, tell, that, the, their, this, to, up, use, very, want, was, we, what, when, where, which, with, yes, yet, yours, zero, etc.

Steps for searching information on web:

Step 1: Think of a topic or question you would like to search

Eg: Let's consider the question What are the medical benefits of Amla?

Step 2: Think of the words/phrases related to that topic or question. Pick three or four keyword that better describe the topic or question. Search using the keywords

Eg: The word/ phrase that are related to this question are amla, medical, benefit

When these words are separately used for searching, the search result may be wide. For example, if the search is done just giving 'Amla' as a keyword, the result which appears are as shown below these results are very wide.

Look through the results of your search and decide whether you now have information that you were seeking. Or you need to search again somewhere else or use different keywords. And redo the search by using broader keywords

Eg: In the previous step, we have not got the desired result. Hence it is very important to add terms to get the desired results. If we search using the phrase medical benefits of amla, the result is more specific as shown below.

Step 3: Add boolean operators or symbols to make the search more specific

In the above search still there are results which do not have the same terms as 'medical benefit of amla'. If we need the results to have all the terms then we can give the search with the symbol like “medical benefit of amla”.

In case, we are particular to know the medical benefit of amla in terms of cold, we can give the search phrase as medical benefit amla AND cold Or medical benefit amla +cold

In case, we are particular to know the medical benefit of amla except for cold, then the search phrase can be medical benefit amla NOT cold Or medical benefit amla -cold

In case, we are particular to know the medical benefit of amla or lemon, then the search phrase can be medical benefit amla OR lemon. So, by using these conjunction words the search phrase can be made more specific.