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Process Analysis

Searching the Internet

If you have ever tried to find information on the Internet, you know that it can be very difficult to find exactly what you are looking for. That is because there is literally millions of WebPages available and not one easy way to keep track of all of them. Assuming that you have experience surfing the Internet, tools like search engines can help, but only if you know how to use them properly. As long as you know what you are looking for, where to search, and how to search, this task can become much easier.

Whenever searching for anything on the Internet, it is important to know exactly what to look for and relay that information to the computer properly. It is crucial to remember that the computer only “knows” what it is told by the person using it. If a vague subject is entered, a large number of pages about various topics will be returned. A search for “cars,” for instance, would result in WebPages about topics ranging from antique cars to matchbox collectibles to the latest in electric and hybrid technology. This is usually a problem that individuals have and can easily be corrected by being more specific, such as typing “formula one cars.” The more specific that the request is, the more applicable and useful the information is. This also saves on sifting through useless and irrelevant information.

The next major step is to determine which type of search engine is best to use for a particular search. First of all, there is Yahoo!. This engine is like the librarian of the Internet because it uses real people to categorize the WebPages, which makes them more likely to be relevant to a search. However, the disadvantage is that this only includes a small percentage of all WebPages and may not have the information that is being sought out. Another site is Google. This site takes quite a different approach, by running programs called “crawlers” which “crawl” across the Internet to index every page that they can find by reading the HTML code of the page. This results in one of the largest databases of WebPages on the Internet, which can also mean a lot to sift through manually. Hotbot is another alternative that works on the same principle as Google, however, it offers advanced searching options such as “by date”. There are also specialized search engines like Scour, which searches only for multimedia content. These focused search engines can be especially useful because they eliminate the chance of off subject websites being displayed. Although, there are many more search engines not listed here, but these are some of the most popular, effective, and well known on the Internet.

The final step of a successful search is to be able to tell the computer how to search for your information. A very simple and effective step is using the “AND” function. This tells the search engine to make sure that these words all appear on the page. For example, typing “Purdue AND University” would return all of the pages that contain both of those words. If the “OR” function is used, only one of the terms needs to be present. “Purdue OR University” would return all pages in which either Purdue or University are present, yielding many more WebPage matches. One final option is typing “ “Purdue University” ”. Entering anything into a search engine using one set of quotes will search for that exact phrase. In this case, that would probably return the least amount of results because the two words must appear not only on the same page, but also together.

When done properly and thought out thoroughly searching the Internet can be easy, saving the user from wasted time and frustration. As the significance of the Internet continues to saturate daily life, searching will become a more important skill for everyone in society. A large amount of information is available right at your fingertips, now all you have to do is find it.

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This page was last updated on Thursday, November 8, 2007

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