Effective Search Strategies
The World Wide Web is growing
by millions of pages a day. The shear amount of pages that exist is
staggering. If you are looking for a good page on Colonial America,
where do you begin?
Fortunately search tool technology
was developed shortly after the web itself and continues to be the vehicle
in which people successfully find information.
There is no doubt that if
you have used the web you have at some point used a search tool like
Yahoo or Google to locate that topic.
Search Tool Types
Generally there are three
types of search engines
- Indexed: A categorical
list of web sites. Usually will contain the head site and not subpages
within the site. An example of this is Yahoo!.
- Search Engine:
Individual pages are searched and displayed based on keywords. When
a keyword is entered into a search field, the search engine will display
results of all the web pages in its database that have the key words
entered. Does not organize results in categories. An example of this
is Google and Alta
Vista.
- Meta-search engine:
Uses databases of several search engines to locate results of a keyword
and displays all the results on a single page. Examples of this are
Dogpile and Metacrawler.
Still Haven't Found What
You Are Looking For?
Only maybe 30% of the pages
on the web are visible or accessible to the above search tools. To find
pages from the "invisible web" try the Specialized
Search Engines and Directories web site or Invisible-web.net.
Education Specific Search
Tools
If you need to send students
to to a search tool or if you are looking for filtered, student friendly
sites the are search tools that are more specifc oto education.
- Yahooligans:
A categorical search tools that indexes sites appropriate for kid
viewing.
- KidsClick:
Another indexed site that is backed by librarians and has over 600
subjects in which students can search.
- TekMom:
A one stop shop for searching. Contains a variety of search fields
that allow students/teachers to search for a wide range of topics
both in general search tools and subject specific ones.
- Blue
Web'n: A site that features many resources for teachers categorized
by subject and activity type.
Search Strategies Activity
Other Resources
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