h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've always found your typical net search engine to be really fast/effective/clever an' all that, but I keep getting this sinking feeling that I've got to know exactly what I want B4 I search, or I end up with a genealogy page in Nebraska. I'm sure it's just me, so how do I make a search for Volkswagons not end up at a porn site?

Spelling Volkswagen correctly could be a start.

Hmmmm, yes, agreed but sadly no good as I'm illiterate and Australian, quite behind the 8 - ball on that score really.

It's very simple, use Google. http://www.google.com which gives much better results. It does this by counting the number of links to a site, and rating it like that, and thus is more intelligent and comes up with exactly what you need usually. Whilst obviously it won't search if you don't know what you're looking for, if you want to know about 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' (to pick an example totally at random) it will find you the most useful site.

Thanks Smiley Ben, I'll give it a go.

Concentrate really hard and repeat the words "I think I can, I think I can..."

"I think I can, I think I can..." will get you 923 matches from AltaVista

Another hint if you're searching for something you have a quote from: say a song lyric or a play or a poem. Give Google or Altavista a whole phrase in quotes is pretty good for getting what you want. You do have to be able to spell, though. Examples:

"my loneliness is killing" (um, it was on the radio this morning, at least, that's my excuse)
"muddied with a thousand" (GYBE!)
"faithless dove" (ah, Jane)
"said it was like a fog" (Kenneth Patchen)
"mad north north" (Hamlet)

You'll find there's some variance between various engines. For example Google did better on the GYBE! quote than AltaVista, but AV was better on the line from the Kenneth Patchen poem.
The last quote gets the most varied response, obviously, since Shakespeare is more widely written about than the others.

Find a search engine that supports Boolean logic, some do, some don't.
Use the Boolean operators,AND, OR, NOT, NEAR.
Type "Boolean" into your search engine and it should find an article that you can save & print for future reference.
Hope that helped

Rocket

The Spider's apprentice is a good guide to all of this: http://www.monash.com/spidap.html

But the true jedi visits http://www.uroulette.com/ and trusts in the force...

Thanks everyone, I'll get into something like dogpile and with quotes, boolean and dictionary on one of those perspex frame things that holds up books while you're typing and the world of information will come tumbling down my phone line. You all rock!
P.S. I'll post again when I find something really tricky!

A final suggestion is to use Sherlock's real-language generator: type in what you want and it will scan every search-engine you tel it to and select EVERYTHING that contains the words you used; I've found it works a treat in discovering new stuff, although I do have to do some wading and occasionally encounter broken links.

The Mac OS 9 Sherlock 2 is even better than the one in 8.6 (the one I use) and should be just what you need. (Of course, if you're stuck with the "special" system of Windows, I don't even think the mighty Zarquon can help you.)

Fruitbat

Oh yes, I am with the Windows paradigm, and "special" it most certainly is.
Still I suppose as my arthritic hands can't hold a pen it's easier than writing letters to the state library researchers, and they tend to blush when asked for things like the anarchists cookbook. Afriend of mine has this groovy lap top thing that you sort of plug a lozenge shaped thing into (please pardon my use of tech jargon) and it behaves like a MAC or a PC. When I grow up and get rich and famous I think I'll get one of those, oddly enough my friend won't let me have a close look at it, think it's something to do with the drool... but the moral of the story is;
I'm finding more and more if one gets lateral mentally one can generally overcome most system shortcommings and always beware a young man using a walking frame wearing a backpack smelling of petrol.