Search Engines

Finding a Search Engine
There are many different engines available, and for obscure searches multiple engines may need to be used.  The following is a list of a few of the more prominent engines available.  There is also a link to Yahoo!'s current list of search engines available.

Yahoo!
A very well-developed search engine that searches by a hierarchical directory listing, and then by Google if more defined results are requested.  Yahoo! also provides links to other available search engines.

Google
This engine does not have a directory listing, but instead searches through an archive of web pages for the specified words or phrases.  When a site is returned, a sample of the page is returned to help ease the searching process.

Webcrawler
Owned by AOL, this engine follows the same pattern of searching as Google, but the results are slightly more difficult to search through as smaller samples of the returned pages are provided.

Netscape Search
Netscape has a search engine developed in a similar fashion to that of Yahoo!.  It is set up with the same kind of hierarchical structure, and provides a link to the popular Google search engine.

MSN Search
Another directory search engine, created by Microsoft, this one permits browsing via a directory structure, but standard searches are done through a web page archive.

List of Search Engines at Yahoo!
This list is extremely large, but there are descriptive tags to each engine to help narrow down the type of engine best suited for a specific task.
 

How to Search
Once you have chosen an engine, you must decide what it is you are specifically looking for.  Firstly, the more precise your search criteria, the less you will have to sift through.  However, it is also true that the more terms are provided, the more results will be returned.  This is because the engine will often search first for all the terms in a page, then fewer terms in a page, until each term is searched for separately.  This can result in an overwhelming number of hits for a small search.  Here are a few tips to help reduce the number of hits, or at least keep them within the appropriate search context.

Don't worry about capitalization.
No search engines I know of use case-sensitive searches, so don't worry about whether a word is capitalized properly.

Avoid articles, prepositions, and conjunctions.
The most commonly used terms in web pages are naturally articles (a, an, the, etc.), prepositions (of, for, to, on, etc.), and conjunctions (and, or, but, etc.).  Using these terms will only increase the results you'll have to sift through.  Avoid them at all costs.

If you are looking to purchase an item, add "buy" or "order" to the search terms.
Most online stores have links with their catalog to "buy" or "order" listed items.  This may return several more results, but search engines general sort their results by relevance, i.e. the more terms found within a page, the higher it is shown on the list.

Use phrases instead of terms, if possible.
A phrase is any group of terms that are grouped together by double quotation marks.  Be aware that this method does not work on all search engines.  When a phrase is searched for, only results that have that exact group of terms is returned.  This will eliminate some relevant pages that may not have that exact phrase.  A search for the phrase "gardening tools" will not return a page that contains only "gardening tool" or "tools for gardening".  Successive searches using different variations of the chosen phrase may be needed.  Avoid beginning or ending the phrase with articles, prepositions, or conjunctions.  These will restrict the results unnecessarily and may leave out an important hit.

If you are looking for a specific bit of information, use a term that is unique to the subject.
If you are looking for information on a GE DVD player, searching for "GE DVD player" will return a great many more results that aren't needed.  If the product number is known, use it.  A search for "GE-DVD101", for example, will provide much more useful results.  Adding "FAQ" to the search criteria may return a relevant "Frequently Asked Questions" list compiled by another user.
 

Sifting the Results
Okay, now you've done your search and hundreds of results have been returned.  Are all of these needed?  No.  Will you have to examine all of them?  Probably not.  In fact, the first hundred are all you'll probably need.  You can sift through these few sites fairly quickly if you look for a couple of tell-tale signs of relevancy.

Watch out for "search engine bait".
Some pages, especially commercial ones, use hidden lines of code that are filled with many terms commonly searched for.  By doing so, they receive many more hits from search engines than would be normally achieved.  These terms are almost always irrelavant to the current search, and simply waste time.  Often these can be detected in a sample of the page by noting the search terms surrounded by a list of terms reminiscent of a high school vocabulary list.  These hits should be ignored.

If a phrase was searched for, watch for "broken phrases".
Line breaks, no matter the quantity, are often considered to a single space by search engines, and punctuation is likewise ignored.  This, combined with the lack of capitalization recognition may create incorrect hits.  For example, "gardening tools" may be returned in a page that ends a sentence with the word "...gardening.", and then follows on a later line with "Tools...".  As the punctuation is removed and the line break is basically ignored, the phrase "gardening tools" gets a hit.  Examine the sample text to see if the phrase appears to be a part of a "run-on" sentence.  This is usually a sign of a broken phrase.