Internet Search Tips
General Internet Searches
With the Internet growing at such a fast rate, finding necessary information is becoming more difficult; searches produce millions of results, and finding the correct information can seem impossible. In this article we will walk through a search on a popular search engine (in this case Google) and explain some easy steps to find the right information.
To being, go to the search engine web page. For Google, the address is http://www.google.com. The search example we will use is "origami". For better results, keep the keywords you are using in your search down to one or two, and make the words specific to the topic. In this case, type in the word “origami” and click on the Google Search button. The search comes up with 1,430,000 results. Look through the first couple of pages of results and click the ones that seem to fit the search best.
If you don’t obtain the results that you are looking for, try searching with different keywords. Continuing with the origami theme, try a search for “paper store” to find a store that has origami paper supplies. The results do not provide a link to an online store to order origami paper from, but to stores for stationary and other various stores. Try searching for “origami paper store” though, and your results are different. The first link provides a website that has many colors of origami paper for sale online. Keep trying different combinations of words related to the topic and eventually you can find information on your topic. Google also has some advanced search tips on their web site at http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html.
A similar search can be done for graphics as well. At the Google page, click the Images link. Then search the exact same way and see the results you get. Keep in mind these images are copyrighted to the owner and should not be published without consent.
Some sites support Boolean searching, which is the use of keywords AND, OR, NOT to find the correct results. Google does not support these searches, but one of the University resources, EBSCOHost, does. For example, a search for “cat AND dog” provides with results that have both cat and dog in them, any articles that have cat, but not dog, would not be included in the results. A search for “cat OR dog” would provide results with cat or dog, any results with just cat or just dog would also be included in the results. A search for “cat NOT dog” though, would provide all results with cat, but then within the results, any with “dog” in them are excluded from the final results. This can be very useful in searching for the correct material.
University Searches
Searching the Internet is more than finding the right information, you need to find the appropriate resource to get the information from. When searching for materials for a paper, the University has many resources available to all students through InfoHawk. If looking for magazine articles, the card catalog would not be the best place to search. For other searches, including full text articles, e-journals, e-books, and library collections and anthologies, there are 267 different resources to search within. To begin finding information, select a resource type. The Reference Sources lists the references by type or subject and provides an easy way to find a good source. Once you have selected a source, use the same search process as you did at the Google search page.
There are some other tricks to finding exactly what you need. For example, when searching in the UI Phonebook, if you know the last name of a person and their first initial, the best results are to use the first initial followed by an asterisk then type in their last name (i.e. j* doe). The asterisk works as a wildcard character, thus any listings with the last name doe and the first initial j will show in the results. The same can be done when one knows the first name but not the last. This can be used in most other Internet searches as well, not only phone book listings.
Last Updated: 04/24/2008