How to use Search Engines

You have many different ways to find what you are looking for on the internet. Besides the main source of information, the use of search engines, you can also

• use directories and follow links from one website to the next website
• use community sites with chats or webboards where people talk and interact with eachother

You will find out what way to find what you are searching suits you best. Very often a combination of several methods will be the most effective.

Using Search Engines

Many people do not find the information they are looking for on the internet because they do not use all possibilities the search engines offer or do not search long enough. While the internet has plenty of different search engines the three giants MSN (Microsoft), Yahoo and Google are fighting to be the dominant force in the internet search engine business. At the moment Google is still the leader and considered as the search engine that provides the best search results. Most websites today are designed to be found by Google. Simple search strings can help you to refine your searches:

• Important is to know that you can look for whole phrases if you use hyphons like in this example:
  "start learning the internet"
  This will give you websites on which this exact phrase is used.



• Another useful thing is to use + and - signs in your search string to include or exclude words:
  start +learning -searchengines
  This will give you websites on which the words "start" and "learning" are but not "searchengines".



• You can also combine several elements in your search string:
  "most popular search engine" +nielsen
  This will give you sites that show you which is the most popular search engine at the moment.

You can try it right now:

Google searches are not case sensitive therefore you do not have to capitalize anything in your search strings. More information about googles search is available here: Informations about the basic search functions of Google and Google help overview.

Specialized Search Engines

Besides the big players in the search engine business some smaller search engines have interesting concepts that you can benefit from if you know about them. The big search engines also offer a variety of specialized searches such as news, local searches or image searches. You can find these options on top of the google searchbar. Click here for an image search on Google for the word "bush". Also interesting is the possiblity to search for telephone numbers and emails Yahoo People provides. Many new features for specialised searches are still in development but can be already used. Google has created an own site for that called Google Labs.

Cluster Search Engines

Some search engines cluster the information you look for. They offer you besides the results for your search string results for several similar search strings. The most popular cluster search engines are Vivisimo and Clusty.

Search Engines and Directories for Professional and Academic Research

Looksmart is a search engine that is specialised on article research. Highbeam is a closed directory which means only members who pay a monthly fee are allowed to see the full articles of their huge articles archive. It is still possible to search for information on Highbeam and read excerpts of articles. Questia is also a closed directory or online library and offers besides articles a variety of books.

Encyclopedias and Web References

Encyclopedia Britannica is a huge archive of books and other written works that were digitalized from various libaries around the world. Another encyclopedia or web reference is MSN Encarta. The fastest growing and the most important is the open encyclopedia Wikipedia. Wikipedia is called open encyclopedia because everybody is allowed to add new subjects or edit existing content.

Fun Things to do with Search Engines

It is fun to play around with googles image search. A funny use is to look for the first picture that was ever made with a certain type of digital camera. Most digital cameras have certain names for the pictures that auto increment with every new picture. Therefore if you search for DSC00001.JPG you will see the first photos that were ever made with a new Sony digital camera. Look for IMG_0001.JPG in Googles image search or any other image search if you want to look for the first pictures that were ever made with new Canon cameras. It works for plenty of different cameras.