rodeo drawing    Whoa, there!
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Harnessing the Wild Wild Web: An Introduction











The World Wide Web is a vast collection of harum-scarum pages, some of which are useful and most of which are not.  Moreover, the WWW is only a small part of the Internet.  Navigating it all is a skill that can take a lifetime to perfect.  But there are a few simple facts that can help you find most of the information you are looking for.

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And....Here are the facts, ma'am:

# 1     Helpful information can be found in a directory, where some of the best sites on the web have been evaluated, selected, and arranged in categories or subjects.  A directory is an especially good choice if you are searching a broad topic, such as poetry or careers.  Good examples of directories are:

YAHOO

OPEN DIRECTORY

ABOUT.COM

#  2     If you can't find what you want there, try a search engine.  Directories index only about 5% of the web, but search engines wander over the web like spiders and index web sites.  The statistics vary daily, but even they cover less than 20% of the Internet--hopefully the best and most-visited 20%.

The most effective search engines present results in order of relevance-- in other words, the pages listed first should contain the most instances of the words you used in the search box.  Everybody has their favorite search engine, and it's a good idea to settle on one and learn how to use it, but the proof is in the pudding.  Choose the one that gives you the best results.

Our current favorites are:

GOOGLE

FASTSEARCH

NORTHERN LIGHT

If desperate, there is something called a metasearch engine, which searches up to ten search engines at once and returns up to ten hits per search engine, but those can be unnecessarily confusing for a novice searcher.

#  3     Searching tips:
 

  •    Choose your search terms carefully.  Be as specific as you can.
  •    Ask yourself some questions and pick out the keywords, preferably nouns and objects.  Use them as search terms.
  •     Use + if the word must be in the result.
  •     Use -  if the word must not be in the result.
  •     Use double quotation marks [ ''   '' ] if words must be found as a phrase or a proper name. 
  •     Be sure your spelling is correct!

Note:  Google assumes that you want all the words in the box to be included in the result.  In other words, the default is the + sign or the word "and" ; it automatically searches phrases, without the use of quotation marks.

#   4 Scrutinize the sites you see---evaluate the search results yourself, because nobody will do it for you!  ask the questions:


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rodeo drawing 3For other searching tools, see the CofC Library's SEARCH THE WEB.

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Before you ride off into the sunset, you may want to know that there are online tutorials for more than you may want to know about searching:

Our own Debbie Vaughn has created a great guide and includes, as any good girl should, a page on the evaluation of web sites:

HOT SEARCH ENGINES YOUR MOTHER NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT,
Danny Sullivan's excellent and comprehensive
SEARCH ENGINE WATCH,
And, finally, for those who really want to get into it, the librarians at the University of California at Berkeley, always in the forefront of searching expertise, have an in-depth tutorial:
FINDING INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET: A TUTORIAL.
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Page created by Betsy Williams on February 14, 2000.
Updated  on October 3, 2000.