Search Engines

Search engines are powerful tools that scan through millions of websites for you; once you are used to using them they become indispensable. But to a beginner they can seem daunting. Which do I use? How do I use it? How can I tell that the answer is the one I want?

A search engine will not give you the answer to a question directly - it will find a list of websites which may give you the answer. After you do your search, a list of sites will be displayed, along with a sentence or two from each site -  often just these sentences will be enough to give you the answer, but generally you will need to click on a link and visit the site for more information. A hint here - whichever search engine you use, if you use the right mouse button to click on the link, you will have the chance to open it in a new window. This makes sure you do not lose the original list of results, just in case the first site you visit doesn't answer your query.

So, how do I start? Let's imagine you are looking for the answer to the question 'Who wrote "The Mill on the Floss"?'

The first search engine most Internet newcomers hear of is Jeeves, which can be found at www.ask.co.uk . This is unique in that you type your entire question into the box, which makes it very easy to use. When you click on "Ask!" it will give you a list of other similar questions you could have asked, followed by a list of sites it feels answer your original question. Without even visiting any of them, you can see that it was written by George Eliot, so your question has been instantly answered.

But sometimes you need a more powerful search tool than Jeeves, and when you are used to using them, the more conventional engines are easy and quick to use. If you use Internet Explorer as your web browser, you don't even need to visit a website! Just delete what is showing in the address bar at the top of the screen and type in the important part of your query - in this case, the words "The Mill on the Floss". Keep the speech marks there - they tell the search tool that all those words need to be kept together as one phrase. Then hit "return"  and in the window below you will get a list of results.

Now to some of the website search engines. Here are some of the most commonly used
www.google.com  or www.google.co.uk
www.lycos.com  or www.lycos.co.uk
www.hotbot.com or www.hotbot.co.uk
www.altavista.com or www.altavista.co.uk
www.yahoo.com or www.yahoo.co.uk
www.a9.com  (no UK only version)
http://search.msn.co.uk/

In each case the .co.uk version lets you choose to search UK only sites which can cut down the number of irrelevant results you get  - for instance, if you are looking for information about Birmingham, you would choose UK only sites or you would find most of your results were about Birmingham, Alabama.

To use these, you don't need to type in your whole query, just key words from it. Remember that words of a phrase, that must appear together, go in inverted commas. With most search engines, if you want several different words or terms to appear in the result, you must type the word AND (uppercase) between them, or put a + sign (with no space) before each word. And if you want it to choose between several different words, put them in brackets with OR  between them. (Google does not need the AND  or + operators, but putting them in will do no harm to your search)

So, going back to our original question, you may feel that a site that was going to give you the answer might not necessarily have the word "wrote"  in it, it could refer to the "writer" or "author".

Try going to www.lycos.co.uk (for example) and typing in, exactly as it appears here;
"The Mill on the Floss" AND (wrote OR writer OR author)
Hit "Go get it!" and the very first site in the list will give you the correct answer.

This is all the information you need for simple searches, and you will be able to find the answers to most comp questions now. But if you want to really refine your searches, all the search engines have an advanced search feature - if you choose this from the link on the page you will be able to make your search much more specific. Also have a look at the help section of your preferred engine - the operators AND  and OR  are very much the tip of the iceberg - you will find many more here, along with tips unique to that engine to speed up your searches. Each engine has its own extra features, like directories, language translators. Picture and newspaper searches,  and even - in the case of Google - the ability to search newsgroups.

If you use search engines a lot, you may want to download one of the tool bars that most of the major search engines now offer. This will sit along the top of your screen and whenever you need to look up an answer you can type your search directly into the box without having to go to the search engine's home page. Naturally you will only want one of these, or your screen would get very cluttered,  so do a few searches and decide which is your favourite search engine before you download one.

And now, a final surprise or two. If you enter a lot of Internet competitions, go to Google and type in your name in inverted commas, followed by (winner OR winners). You may well find yourself listed as the winner of a prize you hadn't been notified of! I have collected several prizes I would otherwise have missed by doing that.

Now go to any .co.uk search engine and type in "free prize draw"  or win AND prize AND competition …….. you will find page after page of links to competitions and comping sites that you might otherwise never have heard of.