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The Isle of WightHospital Broadcasting Association.Bringing Music, Dedications & Local news to the bedside. |
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www.iowhba.org.uk |
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Searching the Internet.by Alex Blades.   BACK to INDEX |
A Guide to searching the Internet.Many of my frustrations when searching for information on the internet, stem from trying to find what we actually want, from among the millions of web sites, documents and pages our there in cyberspace. I found that the trick to a greater degree of success is effective searching. It may sound obvious, but actually knowing what you are looking for, and being able to refine the searching process is the key. How and where to look! The starting point for most people, and especially if you are a little unsure of 'where' to look, is one of the main 'search engine' sites. There are dozens of them, but most use one particular source for their information, and that's the 'Google' site at http://www.google.com Let us use an example. Say you're interested in old motor vehicles, and specifically the wonderful Morris Minor car. If you type in morris minor into the text box on the web page, then click GO, we get (this was when I tried it) 410, 000 pages found in 0.90 sec. That information is on the top right above the first results page. With about 10 results to a page, well that's over forty one thousand pages of results you have got to look through! Given up yet? The search has given everything from Morris dancing to a Minor star constellation, and somewhere in there, is the information you are looking for. What are you looking for? It's a Historic Motor Vehicle; made in the UK by the then Austin Morris company. Do you want details of its history, or how to do one up, or the nearest Moggy Minor Club? So we redefine your search with the words…. historic motor vehicle UK austin morris minor history and we now have 540 'hits' and 54 pages are a bit more manageable, and the sites with the all or most of those search words are in the first 20. Google also allows you to search with other media, and at the top of each page, under the seasonal logo, you will see the choices.....
Sometimes you will find these helpful, when say you need information on an event. If you just need a photo to see what a moggy minor looks like, do an image search. A short but very important digression here, remember that images, as well as the text within an article such as this, are copyright by default. If you wish to use someone else's material, ask first. Many will be happy to allow you to use material for non-commercial purposes, but please ask first, you may be able to exchange links {see the section on links-spiders} and both sites could subsequently benefit from extra visitors. With some subjects, the news sites may give a better result. However, remember that search engines can only list sites that they have indexed. This inherently means that there is a time lag in such indexing and some sites actively block their inclusion. Other search engines only list new sites that are prepared to pay to be listed. In many instances, this guidance will head you off on the right track. However, if you would like a bit more background on the subject.... read on! Remember Links Pages.Do not forget to tap into other people's knowledge of the subject, and their hard work in listing similar pages. As you find specific sites that are accurate for your topic, look up their own 'links' or 'recommended sites' page. Some of those links may take you to pages that are not listed on the search sites, and that link may be your only opportunity to find it. Many search engines have long since closed their doors to the free listing of new sites. So no matter how good a specific web site is, unless they actively approach a listing company, and pay to have their pages reviewed, they are not guaranteed to turn up on a search. The only other way a new site is added is if a search engine spider comes across it linked from another page already listed. 'Spider' is the name for a program run by the search engine company, which follows links on web pages. When it finds a page or web site it doesn't already know about, it catalogues it for inclusion in the directory of sites, which is used when you initiate a search. This is why sites such as Google are so good. Not only do they still encourage people to use their submissions page to bring new sites to their attention, but also their search spiders are constantly visiting pages and re-visiting sites to update their databases. Now a bit about specialist sites.Well you could use a general search, to find you more specialist sources of information. Type in specialist search engine and the subject you're interested in, will often give you an advance start. Also, you have on-line sites that offer more of a 'members club' or 'family community' feel. They are often called 'portals' and can be likened to a specialist bookcase within a larger library of the world wide web. They act as a doorway into what may be members' only areas or offer specific services such as music search site. The Microsoft MSN portal is one example, from which you can access everything from music and sport, to on-line email facilities with their hotmail accounts. Some of these sites tend not to allow the search spiders to catalogue their pages. This may be that the contents are very dynamic, that is they are changed or updated regularly. To list them would always lead to a 'duff' page, as its contents would have changed by the time the search engine had included it. Or it may be because the content is aimed at a specific audience, say medical doctors or club members. They often require you to register with them, and you may need to pay a subscription. These sites may allow limited access to non-registered browsers, and give just summaries of selected articles. The full text being only available on registering, and/or paying a fee. This type of site is often a journal / newspaper archive which ask a small fee for old articles, but they usually allow some access once you have provided some basic details and a valid email address. Sites such as..... http://www.nytimes.com {The New York Times}; http://www.telegraph.co.uk {The Telegraph}; Many business2business networks; and shopping portals, for example... http://www.amazon.co.uk {Amazon} also need you to register to get full use of the sites facilities. For literature searches, there are sites such as the 'Project Gutenberg' literature archives http://promo.net/pg/ ,which contain the texts of 1000's of classic pieces of literature. Project Gutenberg is the Internet's oldest producer of free access electronic books ( eBooks or eTexts ), and there are advanced search options to find that key phrase or segment of text. But think twice before you print out a whole novel. That's a lot of paper and ink! Just when you thought you had everything sorted, lets cover a couple more sources. First, there are 'Open directory' sites. These are like a massive 'yellow pages' divided down into categories. They also have the feature that the directory is edited and developed using the services of people like you and me. Anyone with a specialist interest can put his or her name forward to be included as a subject editor. One of the most accessed is the Netscape backed dmoz open directory at http://dmoz.org On a similar vein, there are numerous 'web rings', each with a specific theme. These can include anything from a few similar web sites, up to web rings containing hundreds of sites. Again, each is overseen by a web ring master, who actively invites new member sites to join their ring. A good starting point is http://webring.yahoo.com and you will often see a link into a given ring at the bottom of a members home page. For the more observant reader, you will note that the internet address for these last two links, do not have the 'www.' Which you normally find. This is a good indication that you are going into a site that is in itself a 'mini world wide web' with its own sub-sites and domains. Something which you also find with the larger internet access service providers such as AOL. Search engine spiders.How does that search site, when you type in those search words, manage to list all those pages? The site has to have initially been found by or made known to the provider of that search service. Historically, when a web site designer has finished a site, its existence is made known to the major search engines by completing an on-line site submissions form page. The site would be then 'reviewed' and if acceptable, added to the catalogue of listed sites. The grand-daddy of this was Yahoo, which used teams of reviewers to check each site, and issue a site summary which appeared on the search results. As the volume of new sites grew, the use of automated systems using various algorithms within purpose written programs was developed. These automated site review and catalogue programs are commonly known as 'Spiders'. META tags.Hidden within the hypertext language of a web page, is the ability to include a range of META tags. Some of which can be used to provide information on the content of the web page. Two of the possible META tags are, "Keywords" and "Description". These provide a list of key words associated with that web page. The key words for this page include "hospital, radio, internet, search, engines, Isle, wight, HBA" and the META tag description is "Searching the internet. A guide to search engines and finding information. By Alex Blades for Isle of Wight Hospital Radio." The search engine spiders, tap into this information, along with the header text on the page, to produce a reference for that page. These are now very sophisticated, and old tricks of repeating important key words many times, and adding un-related but commonly searched for words in the META tags are easily identified. Any such offending pages often excluded from listing. This is how, when you do a search, you do still occasionally get a site listed which appears to have nothing in common with what you are looking for. There will have been words in the header META tags, either accidentally or purposefully leading to the bad indexing of the site. Many of those sites that we would wish the younger surfer not to find, have tried this trick to get themselves more widely listed. And the reason why I have not used the three-lettered word beginning with 's' and ending in 'x' in the preceding sentence. Search spiders also now look for words and descriptive phrases, which would indicate a potentially offensive site. The search spiders are also programmed to follow any hyper link, ie. those http://….. and links to further pages within a site and check them for cataloguing also. There are limits to how deep into a web site the search engines probe. And this has to be taken into consideration by site designers when trying to make a site search engine friendly. If you are interested in finding out more regarding META tags, along with the best methods of web page design with a key to search engine optimisation. There a numerous sites giving advise. Use the above highlighted words in your search! Or you could try http://www.deadlock.com and look for their 'get streetwise' section. No professional connections with this site, I list it just because it was one of the best sites that I found when I started designing and promoting web pages! To finish with, {and this comes with an advanced users only warning}, you may have seen the term FTP used, most commonly with the transfer 'publishing' of web pages onto the Internet. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. In the days before this wonderful, easy, user friendly home internet and world wide web access {Believe me, it is!} that we currently enjoy, there was a system of communicating and finding shared files on public servers and the public areas of large educational and corporate/government networks, which was more akin to searching through your C:/ drive with windows explorer and associated with references such as gopher, USENET & ARCHIE. For most people, the closest you get to this is with the file transfer programs {used for web page publishing and web site management} such as Ipswich WS_FTP or Cute FTP, when you manually upload your home page. Deja/USENET communication archives are available through the Google/ groups, but using an FTP programme, a whole world of public file access is out there. Be warned though, you are ultimately responsible for where your searches lead you, and the contents of Pandora's box. Examples of starting points for specific searches.
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More sites will be added as I find helpful ones. |
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TOP of PAGE | BACK to INDEX | HOME PAGE Designed by Alex Blades. This document and site is maintained for The Isle of Wight Hospital
Broadcasting Association (I.O.W.H.B.A). |
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