There are numerous websites which have specialized to help their visitors to find information in the internet. Almost all of this websites are free of charge, many of them try to earn some money by displaying advertisement on their websites. Only the usage of archives might cause costs especially when they are offering copyright protected material.
The first step is finding a suitable search spot. The description of search spots on this website will give you a lot of proposals and you will soon have found out which search spots are meeting your personal taste. But as even at the selected search spot there are many links provided you would need to make an at least understandable request to find the websites for your original theme of interest. Bad requests would normally lead to either no results or too many (partly irrelevant) results.
Making search requests:
Interfaces:
To feed a request two ways are most etablished and could be combined if they are both offered on the search spot:
- Theme folders
They are most usually in directories. When selecting a theme of your interest the result list will be reduced to websites which are connected to the selected theme.
- Keyword search
This is available at almost every search spot. You can enter one or more keywords related to your request and will get a result list of websites containing one or more of the given keywords. The art is finding good keywords (imagine a situation when you are telling a stranger you want to know the date of creation of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa by using about four words).
Computers have no real intelligence and can not really understand the meaning of your requests. They just try to present to you whatever in their databases seems to suit best to your search request. In the case of theme folders the editors of the directory have done the sorting of links to different theme folders. If those editors have done this incompletely or by using a scheme different from the one you would have used, the computer can not calculate the missing relations.
A basic text based search conatains no computer intelligence either. It would return all results including the given key words. Therefore you should drop words such as "the", "a" and "and" from your requests as they contain no information for the search (except you are searching for a citation).
In basic text based searches the logic to combine several key words is an "AND"-Logic, which means only results are returned which contain ALL given keywords words. So entering more key words would reduce the number of results.
Some text based searches offer an "OR"-Logic as well, which means AT LEAST ONE of the given key words is part of a result. In this logic entering more keywords would produce more results.
Usually the key words used for the search are treated case insensitive, so normally it would make no difference whether you search for "Albert Einstein", "albert einstein" or even "AlBerT einSTEin".
Improving search requests:
Especially unexperienced users do not get the expected result list from their first request. But they could easily repeat the request by refining it with every step until they get what they search for. As there are only two kinds of failures that could occure refining the request is quite easy:
- Too many results
The result of your request contains a huge number of links which most probably would contain worthy results but the total number of returned links is too big to find the items of your interest within them.
- If available select a more specific theme folder
- If possible particularize your key words (e.g. use "dachshund" instead of "dog"
when searching for dachshunds).
- Evaluate the first results of the list and then add a word to your keywords which would sort out some
of the unwanted results but would still keep your search targets.
(e.g. if you are searching for a computer mouse you should add the word "computer" to your request
to get rid of the results dealing with the rodent.
- Some search places allow to exclude certain keywords. This option could be found following a link
to "advanced search options" or you could try using the minus character using a scheme such as
"dog - dachshund" (if available at this search spot the minus sign will exclude the following keyword
- the request in that case would be "show me all results about dogs but don't show any result containing
the word 'dachshund'". So this would remove all results,
containing the word 'dachshund'.
- Many search places allow combining keywords by using a quotation mark. A request at the
search engine
Google
in November 2007 for 'Last action hero' resulted in 8.820.000 websites which contained the words
'last', 'action', 'hero'. Requesting '"Last action hero"' delievered only 524.000 results which could
make it easier to find information on the film with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- If available select a more specific theme folder
- Too few results
The requests results in a very small or even empty result list. The wanted result is not contained in that list.
- Check all keywords for possible typos.
- If available select a more general theme folder.
- Try to generalize keywords (e.g. use "dog" instead of "dachshund" if information on dogs would be
suitable for your search as well).
- Remove one of the keywords in case you used more than one.
- Remove excluding criteria or combinations in case you have used any.
- If in all items above you choosed the most generalization possible the request is unknown at this search spot. Retry your request at a search engine or in a lexicon. If this would deliever no results either you might try external sources or your information is not available in the Internet.
- Check all keywords for possible typos.
Categorization of key words:
| Category | Description | Examples |
| General term | A widely spread term which is likely to be of interest for many people. | sports, politics, plants, math, music, holidays |
| Special term | A term which is too special to be of interest for the majority of people. | dachshund, Aegwynn, dynablaster |
| Unknown term | A term you are not sure how it is named or spelled | The apparat for measuring air pressure, Aprahamm Linkoln |
| Questions | no explanation needed :) | How high is the Eiffel tower?, What does a hotel in London cost?, Who is the most popular politician? |
If you have found out to which category your request belongs the following overview will give you tips for the search spots and search requests which could find your information best. As the right proceeding depends on the given request and on your personal taste in most cases different strategies are listed.
General term
file:
- Visit a suitable archive and enter you request there.
- Use a directory and specify the theme folder
to the most suiting one.
If you do not find suitable results go back to the main folder and enter your keywords there. - Use a search engine and search for the requested item (maybe adding one or two words such as "file",
"download", "portal" or "archive" to the request).
- Visit a lexicon and enter your request there.
- Use a search engine and search for the requested item.
- Use a directory and specify the theme folder to the most suiting one.
If you do not find suitable results go back to the main folder and enter your keywords there. - Use a search engine and search for the requested item.
- Visit a lexicon and enter your request there. Examine the text and the end of the article whether
you find any links to suitable related websites.
special term
file:
- Visit a suitable archive and enter you request there.
- Use a search engine and search for the requested item (maybe adding one or two words such as "file",
"download", "portal" or "archive" to the request).
- Visit a lexicon and enter your request there.
- Use a search engine and search for the requested item.
- Visit a lexicon and enter your request there. Examine the text and the end of the article whether
you find any links to suitable related websites.
- Use a directory and specify the theme folder to the most suiting one.
If you do not find suitable results go back to the main folder and enter your keywords there. - Use a search engine and search for the requested item.
Unknown term
Many search spots allow searching of parts of words. Select the longest fraction of the term you are searching for of which you are sure it is spelled correctly (like "raha" as part of "Aprahamm Linkoln"). If that is not supported use replacers such as "*" (replaces a unknown number of unknown letters) or "?" (replaces one unknown letter). This means use "*raha*" to search for "Aprahamm Linkoln" (who of course is Abraham Lincoln) or if you are sure of the spelling in all letters except of one use e.g. "Lin?oln" (if you are not sure if it is "Lincoln" or "Linkoln").
If the selected search spot is not supporting searching for parts of words at all you could either use another search spot of the same type which does support fragment search or you could use a search engine to find out the correct spelling (search for related words (e.g. "president", "USA") and look for the correct spelling of your keyword in the abstracts of the results of the search engine). Once you found out the correct spelling you could either use the results of the search engine to continue your search or return to your original search spot (now knowing the correct spelling).
question
- Visit a search engine and enter your question there in a whole sentence and use quotation marks at the
beginning and in the end. This would start the search for that exact phrase - maybe someone else has already
entered the same question before (and hopefully got an answer which you can then use as well). If you get
no result vary the question a bit and try again.
Example: '"How do I install Linux"', "How to install Linux", "Which steps are needed to install Linux"
- Visit a search engine and enter the key words of the question
Example : "install Linux" maybe adding further words such as "howto", "guide", "manual" or similiar.
"They came to see and to be seen as well"
- Ovid
- Ovid