Handout 3: Advanced Internet Research

Table Matching Your Search Needs with the Features Search Engines Offer

Features of your search inquiry Matching Search Tool Features worth learning and using
Are you looking for a proper name or a distinct phrase?

  • The name of an organization or society or movement.
  • A proper name or an individual
  • A distinctive string of words generally associated with your topic

Can you think of an organization, proper name, or phrase to search for? It might help zoom in on the pages you want.

PHRASE SEARCHING is a feature you want in every search tool you choose.

Requires your terms all to appear in exactly the order you enter them.

Enclose the phrase in double quotations " "

Examples:

"affirmative action"
"world health organization"
"A person's name"

In some search engines, capitalizing initial letter will cause the terms to be search as a phrase: World Health Organization

Are some of your terms common words with many meanings and contexts?

  • Children in conjunction with television and also violence
  • Censorship as an aspect of ethics in journalism

BOOLEAN AND will help:

  • children AND television AND violence
  • journalism AND ethics AND censorship

Google and AllTheWeb and most other search engines put AND in between words automatically (by default):

  • children television violence
  • journalism ethics censorship

Do you anticipate lots of search results with terms you do not want?

  • Your search for biomedical engineering and cancer brings you lots of academic programs, and you want research reports. So you try to exclude documents containing Department of or School of.

BOOLEAN AND NOT will help:

  • "biomedical engineering" AND cander AND NOT "Department of" AND NOT "School of"

or its -EXCLUDES near equivalent:

  • "biomedical engineering" cancer -"Department of" -"School of"

Are there synonyms, spelling variations, or foreign spellings for some of your terms?

  • women, females with networking
  • Sarajevo, Ssarayevo with peace
  • literature, litterature with French, francaise

BOOLEAN OR will help:

  • (women OR females) AND networking
  • (Sarajevo OR Sarayevo) AND peace
  • (literature OR litterature) AND (French or francaise)

In Google, capitalize OR (no need to type "and"):

  • peace sarajevo OR sarayevo
  • literature OR litterature french OR francaise

In AllTheWeb, use parentheses and omit the OR:

  • peace (sarajevo sarayevo)
  • (literature litterature) (french francaise)

Are you looking for home pages and/or other documents primarily about your term(s)?

  • The home page of the American Dietetic Association
  • Pages primarily about Affirmative Action

LIMIT TO TITLE FIELD in documents:

  • title: "American Dietetic Association"
  • title: "affirmative action"

In Google, use allintitle:"affirmative action"

Are you looking for terms with many possible endings?

  • feminism, feminist, feminine
  • children, child

TRUNCATION permits retrieving all these variation in one serach term:

child* retrieves child and children

Some system search word ending variants automatically (stemming). See the specific instructions for each of the recommended search tools.

To be sure use OR searches: children OR child

Colby Glass, MLIS