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Are You Finding What You REALLY Need?
by: Janet L. Hall
Are You Finding What You REALLY Need?: Internet Searching Techniques By: Janet L. Hall Remember the game Hide & Seek? Just like the game, websites can be hiding from you on the Internet while you try to seek out particular information, services, or products. How do you find what you are seeking? The Internet is like the KING of all Libraries. Among the stacks you seek. Among the librarians (search engines and directories) you perform a query. But if you don't know the language, the search criteria, or your way around, you can get lost playing endless hours of hide & seek. In order for you to locate the information or site you're seeking, several things must have happened: >> The site owner must register or submit their site with the directory in which you are doing a search. Then a real person goes and checks out their site and decides if the site is worthy of getting listed in their directory. >> The site owner must register or submit their site with the search engine in which you are doing a search OR the search engine's robots or spiders must have * crawled through * their websites which will rank them by many different factors. The most important factor is the use and weight of the site owner's use of keywords. When you do a search or a query, you type in a word or phrase of words, right? Here is where you might not find what you are looking for because the site owner or webmaster didn't put in the keywords you are typing in the search window. Therefore, the site owner or webmaster must determine what keywords are important for each page on their website and what word(s) you will type in a search window to find their site. The words you type in might not be the webmasters keywords, so you don't find what you are looking for. To make matters worse, each search engine and directory can have their own search criteria; however, most are very similar. Using particular search strategies can help narrow your search and hopefully find the stuff more relevant to what you are seeking. Seven Searching Techniques to try: >> Read the help section of the search engine or directory >> Put word(s) in quotation marks; tells most search engines you're looking for that exact term >> Type in lowercase letters; many search engines are case-sensitive >> Be specific - instead of typing in organizers, type in professional organizers >> Type in the plural form of the word >> Type in the word(s) misspelled, such as organizers or organisers or orgnaizers >> Type in a longer variation of the word, instead of organize, type in organizing. Anthony Muller, President of Web Mercs, said in his article, * How to Avoid the Most Common Myths and Blunders of Search Engine Optimization *: * There are hundreds of search engines, but only 20-30 main ones, and just four-five of them account for 60-75% of the total search engine traffic. For example, Altavista gets about 17% of the total engine market and it equals roughly 40 million searches a day; as opposed to Lycos or HotBot which each get 2-3% of the market. It would shock you to know Yahoo only gets about 24%! * My two favorite search engines to locate what I'm looking for is dogpile.com and alltheweb.com dogpile.com allows you to search through 14 search engines at the same time! Type in your word(s), click on FETCH, and WaLA! You've just worked a little smarter, not harder. At dogpile.com you can choose to search through images, audio, auctions, news, FTP, Discussion, and Small Biz. At dogpile you can use advanced searching techniques, by using additional syntax, that will help * you gain added control over your search and weed out any unwanted results. * Additional Syntax for Searching Techniques: >> Type AND between words or the symbol + before a word thus allowing a specific combination of words to be present in all search results. Example: Home AND Clutter or Home + Clutter will result in different search results. >> Type NOT between words or the symbol - before a word Example: Dogs NOT Cats or Dogs - Cats will result in sites when only dogs appear but not cats. >> Type OR to include both words. Example: Office OR Clutter Not all search engines support these syntaxes in dogpile; therefore, dogpile will only search the engines that support the syntax you use, allowing a more tailored result. alltheweb.com searches for documents on the Internet that contain your search word(s). They offer a pull down menu to the left of the search window where you can choose from different syntaxes. They also offer an advanced search where you can perform word filters, word(s) that should be included or excluded from your search. Here's to finding what you are looking for! Smiles, not Piles, Janet L. Hall is the owner of OverHall Consulting, an organizing firm for office, home, computer clutter, and your life. Visit her website at http://www.overhall.com Phone consultations and coaching are available. Copyright (c) 2001 by OverHall Consulting P.O. Box 263, Port Republic, MD 20676 All Rights Reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce, copy, or distribute this article so long as article is kept intact, this copyright notice, and full information about the author is attached. About the Author Janet L. Hall is a Professional Organizer, Speaker, and Author. She is the owner of OverHall Consulting, and Organizing By Phone. 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