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To
the Search Box and Beyond!
Published in the Aggie on April 21, 2004
You’re handed your first assignment of the quarter: “Explore
the definitions of several obscure words used in Shakespeare’s
plays.” Need a little help?
Aside from the library, chances are you will go online to learn
more. If you use Google,
which gets over 200 million hits a day and accounts for 34.9%
of all Web searches (according to The New York Times), you might
find some of these tips useful:
Maximizing Your Google Search
- Place quotation marks around the words in your query in
order to search for the phrase as a whole. For example, if
you type in Shakespearean slang, you will get info on all
kinds of slang (teen slang, British slang, street slang etc.).
If you use quotation marks (“Shakespearean slang”),
Google will only pull up sites about Shakespearean slang.
- If you are looking for a specific answer to a specific question,
write your search phrase in the form of an answer. For example,
type “Shakespeare was born in” instead of "What
year was Shakespeare born?" It is much more likely you’ll
find the answer this way.
- Put a hyphen before any word you wish to exclude from the
search. For example, Shakespeare -sonnets eliminates all sites
about Shakespeare’s sonnets if you’re looking
for info on his plays exclusively.
- If you’re getting too many results, you immediately
know that you should create a more precise query phrase. Try
adding more words to your phrase. For example, if you type
Shakespeare into the box, you’ll get 6,870,000 results,
but if you add just one more word in the search box (e.g.,
Shakespeare biography) the number of results is reduced by
90%.
- Use a tilde (~) if you’re not getting enough results.
This searches for synonyms of the word that follows the tilde.
Just What Are You Looking For?
- 411 For Free: Google has the White and Yellow pages built
into its database! For example, type phonebook:pizza davis,
CA in the search field for a listing of all of the pizza places
in Davis. This also works with specific places and people.
- Calculations: Google has a built-in calculator. Just type
the equation in the search field to see its answer.
- Metric Conversions: Trying to convert units of measurement?
Just type miles in a kilometer or feet in a meter to discover
the correct amount of units.
- Images: By selecting “Image” on the front page
of Google, you can search for photos, cartoons, illustrations
and other graphics by keyword.
- Froogle: Part search engine, part online store, this Google
feature presents products from many different Web sites so
the viewer may compare prices.
Other Search Engines
Don’t forget about these other search engines; sometimes
they turn up different results than Google.
- Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com):
Yahoo recently announced plans to query the deep Web, which
means it will turn up search results with more obscure pages.
- AltaVista (http://www.altavista.com):
this search engine organizes your results into folders as
well as listing them.
- All The Web (http://www.alltheweb.com):
a search engine that often features different results than
Google.
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