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21 Internet Searching Tips

by Christopher G.  Mendla
last revised 3/1/03

I've often heard that humans only use something like 5% of our intellectual capacity. (In some cases I believe it is a lot less). The same can be said of the internet. The Internet provides instantaneous access to a staggering amount of information. However, I see people only using a portion of what is available.

Before we go on, we should address the issues of how the information is used. Information, by itself, is neither good nor evil. It is there. An analogy would be the chainsaw in my shed. It is neither good nor evil. If a tree falls and blocks my driveway, I can use the chainsaw to remove it and convert it to firewood. However, the chainsaw could also be used for vandalism or to chase your neighbors.

Here are 21 tips I hope that you'll find helpful

1. How do you get the most out of the Internet? There are two parts to this. First, you need to be able to ask the right questions and second, you need to know where to ask those questions.
2. Understand the range and depth of information available. The Internet is growing at an exponential rate.
3. Formulate your question - Give a few second of thought to what your are trying to find. The better you can define your question, the more likely you are to find an answer.  
4. Know the parts of the internet. Most people simply search using one search engine. That is only a portion of the available information. In addition to the web, there is Usenet, paid sources, newspapers and more.
5. Pick a search engine. Most people agree that Google is the dominant search engine. However, you might want to try you search on other search engines as well.  There are a number of other search engines as well. Hint - go to any search engine and search for search engines
6. Dogpile? There are some search pages called metacrawlers or metasearches that allow you to search a number of search engines simultaneously. Two of these are www.dogpile.com and www.metacrawler.com
7. Choose your search words carefully - Most search engines connect the words you enter into the search box with AND. In other words, if you search for train photographs, the results shown will show you  only those pages that contained the words train and photographs. Most search engines will have an 'advanced search' or 'help' link that will tell you how you can refine your searches.
8. Use quotes - If you enclose words in quotes, most search engines will only show you pages with that exact phrase. For example bucks county will return all pages with bucks and county. However, "bucks county" will only return those pages with the phrase bucks county.
9. Wild Times. Most search engines support wild cards. If you are searching for consulting, you will only get pages with the word consulting. However, if you search for consult*, you will get pages with consult, consulting, consultant, consultants etc. (Note that Google does not support wild cards)
10. Try different approaches - If you aren't successful with one approach, try different approaches
    1. Try different search engines
    2. Try Usenet
    3. Try different words. For example, if you were searching for hill, try incline.
11. New Windows.  When you are searching, you will get a page of results. If you click on any of the results, the page opens in the same window. The problem here is that if that page doesn't give you what you wanted, you have to redo your search. You can right-click on the results and choose open in a new window.

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12. Search boxes and site maps. When you find a promising site you may need to find the exact pages with the information that you need.  Many sites today have search boxes that will let you search for something on their site. This can often help you pinpoint just the right pages. You also should look for site maps, also called table of contents. These are usually a hierarchical directory of all the pages in a particular site. 
13. Edit Find. Use your browser's find function when you encounter long pages. For example, suppose you are looking for networking solutions and you encounter a long page of text. Go to the menu of your browser and choose edit, then find in this page. That will allow you to zero right in on your search terms.
14. The Global Community - There are a multitude of newspapers and news services available from around the world. Many of them, especially the major papers, have English versions. You can read Pravda, Le Monde, The London Telegraph and more.
15. Your newsstand - Google has an index of stories from newspapers around the country. The index is usually no more than a few minutes old. Go to www.google.com and choose the News tab. Hint - For breaking news, choose the sort by date option.
16. Federal, State and Local - The government is rapidly embracing the Internet. You can get an amazing amount of information if you simply know where to go.
    1. http://thomas.loc.gov/  A starting point for Federal information
    2. www.state.pa.us -
    3. http://www.buckscounty.org/
17. Try a portal - A Portal is a one stop shop. They try to be all things to all people. Some such as www.yahoo.com do a pretty good job of this. When you get to Yahoo, check the page out carefully, you'll find that you can
    1. use online yellow and white pages
    2. browse classifieds
    3. Shop and participate in auctions.
    4. look for jobs
    5. read and post personals
    6. read the news, weather and sports online
    7. research companies
    8. and a whole lot more.
18. Try again later - Keep in mind that many of the search engines do their major updates once a month. Also remember that the Internet is growing quickly. New sites and pages are being added daily. You might want to try your searches again a month later.
19. Usenet - The good, the bad and the ugly. Usenet is a collection of discussion groups on just about every conceivable topic. Anyone can participate. A large portion of Usenet is porn, politics, unacceptable jokes and more. However, the rest of it is quite useful. There are groups for anything such as lawn tractors, music, model trains, anything computer related, space military.. in other words, just about anything. Keep the following in mind when looking at Usenet
    1. There is no editorial review. Anyone can post almost anything. Double check anything you find on Usenet before using that information
    2. An easy way to access Usenet is to go to www.google.com and choose the groups tab. The groups tab will allow you to search the Usenet archives.
    3. Be careful before you post. If you post on Usenet, you invite spam and some vicious personal attacks. Also, everything posted is archived which means if you say something stupid, it might be visible for years to come.
20. A  picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes you are looking for pictures. Go to www.google.com and click on the Images tab. Keep in mind that as of March 2003, Google seems to be slightly behind in their updates of this area.
21. Favorites - Favorites or bookmarks, allow you to come back to pages that you visited. You should learn to use them. Some tips:
    1. Create folders for various topics. For example, if you are taking a trip to Philadelphia and you are searching, create a folder in you favorites called Philadelphia and store the pages you find there
    2. Back up your bookmarks. Once you build a good set of bookmarks, you don't want to lose them. Learn how to back them up (they are usually in C:\Windows\Favorites if you are using Explorer.

In addition to the tips above, you might want to try searching for video's using Yahoo's new tool. Go to videos.yahoo.com and try your search. They have quite a few videos in their index.

 

Mr. Christopher Mendla is available to give a presentation on this topic in the Greater Philadelphia area including the Trenton and Princeton areas of New Jersey. Please contact us for availability and rates.

Reprints/permissions. You may link to this page without the need for any additional permission. If you wish to use this content on your site or in printed form, please contact us for pricing (we are very reasonable).

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Last modified:  11/10/06