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Understanding and Applying the Main Search Principles of Internet Search Engines

Search Engine Definition

How Search Engines Work

Choosing a Website

Refining Your Search

Using Quotation Marks

Further Hints

Search Engine Definition

A search engine is used if you wish to find information about a particular topic and you don't know the URL's of any web pages on that topic.  In order to use a search engine you will need to type in the URL of one in the  address bar of your web browser.  One of the best search engines is Google and can be found at www.google.co.uk

How Search Engines Work

Search engines work by using keywords.  For example you may want to find information about cars so you will do a keyword search using a search engine.  If you want to use a search engine follow these instructions:

1. Type in the URL of a search engine in the address bar of your web browser.
2. Type a keyword into the query box then press the Enter key on your keyboard.                                                                           

You will notice that after a few seconds your search engine will present you with every website it has found with the keyword cars in it.

Choosing a Website

You may have noticed that in most cases your searches will turn up hundreds of thousands or even millions of hits (a hit is just jargon for a web page found by a search engine).  There are a few things which can help you determine which site you may want to visit.

1. Relevance: Search engines will list the number of matches it has found in order of the number of times your keyword shows up in a web page.  The more times your keyword is found the higher op the list it will be.
2. Title: The title of the web page will be given in the search results.  The title may or may not give you an idea of what is on the web page.
3. Description: Most search results will include a the first few lines from the web page.

If you don't find anything in the first list of results click on then next hyperlink to look through the next list of results.  Remember that the further down the list you go the less occurrences of your key word there will be in the web pages found.  It is often not useful to look at websites to far away from the top ten.

Refining Your Search

You may have noticed that doing a search on a word like cars produces several hits and a lot of websites that are not specific to what you may be looking for.  For example, you may really be looking for information on Porsche cars.  If you just type cars into the query box on your search engine you will find information on Ford cars, Toyota cars, Vauxhall cars, etc.  In this case you want to refine your search i.e. make it more specific.  To do this follow these instructions:

1. Type in the URL of a search engine in the address bar of your web browser.
2. Type descriptive keywords into the query box then press the Enter key on your keyboard.                                                                          

This should give us more specific information but this is still not as good as it can get.  In the above example this search will not only give us all the web pages with the word Toyota and cars in it, but will also give us all of the web pages  with the word Toyota and all of the web pages with word cars in it.

Using Quotation Marks

To be even more specific it is helpful to use quotation marks around your keywords.  To do this follow these directions:

1. Type in the URL of a search engine in the address bar of your web browser.
2. Type descriptive keywords into the query box and place quotation marks around them.  Press the Enter key on your keyboard.                                     

In this example only those web pages with the keywords, "Toyota and cars", appearing together will be presented to you.

Further Hints

1. You may sometimes find that you have been too specific and you haven't found any websites at all.  If this is the case use less keywords or leave out the quotation marks.
2. Leave out words like a or the as they will be ignored anyway.
3. If you cannot find what you are looking for with one search engine try another.