Googlesearchtechniques-DePaulUniversity.docVIP

LSP 121 Homework #9 Due: Searching for items on the Internet is a common and useful tool. One can search for virtually anything, including research articles, images, tutorials, and products. With web pages numbering in the billions, if someone has thought of it, it is probably on the web. But this power of the Internet is also part of the problem. How does one conduct a search that returns accurate results? Most would agree that Google is the leading Internet search engine. Let’s take a look at some of the more useful search tools and tips in order to make our searching more effective. Here are some of the more basic concepts. When doing a search, use the best keywords as possible, and use multiple keywords. When you use multiple keywords, web pages are returned that include all the keywords (logical AND). Thus, a search for vacations is not as good as a search for florida vacations. Even better would be florida golf vacations. 1. Try a Google search using the keyword computer. How many hits do you get? Now try searching on computer science. How many hits? Then search on computer science Illinois. How many hits? Finally, search on computer science programs Illinois. How many hits? If you are looking for a specific quote or a particular person, place quotation marks around the phrase or name. For example, if you are looking for a long lost friend, you might try “bill rutkowski”. If you are looking for a title to a book, try “of mice and men”. Note that capitalization is ignored. Google is so good that many times simply entering a person’s name without quotation marks will return what you are looking for. But you may get a lot of non-useable hits. 2. Let’s say you are looking for an intro to biology book. Using Google, search for introduction to biology. How many hits did you get? Now try putting quotation marks around “introduction to biology”. How may hits? Is there a better method yet? You can ask Google to keep words out of