Search Engines
Created | Updated May 1, 2003
Search engines are one of the two main types of websites used for finding sites on the web - Directories being the other. They work by crawling the web and indexing the contents into their databases.
Here are some of the features to look out for:
Boolean Searching - Using + or - signs before search terms allows tight control on the results sent back to your browser. The minus sign allows you to omit a term so if that term appears on a page that page will not be shown or not be given a high priority. The plus sign allows you to force the search engine to give priority to sites containing that word or omit sites that don't contain it. Beware: Sites deal with your terms differently and so these signs may be totally irrelevant in some.
Search by Field - This allows the user to specify where the search terms should be on the page to get high priority or be included in the results. This could be to mean that the term must be in the title of the page or as part of the url address.
Exact Quotation Searches - Using double quote marks in some search engines will allow the user to make sure the terms are in the exact right order and are together. This can be useful if a search provides a lot of irrelevant results which contain the terms but not in the relevant order.
Natural Language Searching - This allows the user to type in a search query in the form of a english question. This is useful when you are looking for specific information and don't want to spend too long finding it. Ask Jeeves was the first site to use this feature.
