To introduce students to the powerful techniques for finding and analyzing through the internet.

1. BEYOND
GOOGLE
RETHINKING YOUR HUNTING METHODS

2. OBJECTIVES
• Internet and search basics
• Search engine types
• Other online sources
• Refining an internet search

3. RESEARCH MATTERS
Research allows us to move from ignorance to knowledge.
There is a wealth of information at our fingertips.
We only need to know how to access it.

4. A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is a software application for
retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web.
YOUR WEB BROWSER

5. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the
standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link several billion devices worldwide.
THE INTERNET

6. ANATOMY OF A URL
A URL is one type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI); the generic
term for all types of names and addresses that refer to objects on the
World Wide Web.
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7. POPULAR DOMAINS
Top Level Domains
(TLD)
• .edu - educational
institution
• .org - non-profit
organization
• .gov - government site
• .mil – military
• .com - commercial site
Country Code Top Level
Domains (CCTLD)
• .cn - China
• .de - Germany
• .uk - United Kingdom
• .nl - Netherlands
• .eu - European Union
• .ru - Russian Federation

8. Knowing URL endings
will give you clues to
who is sponsoring the
website and help you
evaluate sources!

9. SEARCH ENGINES
• Web sites used for retrieval of data,
files, or documents from a database
• For the same reason you need a
card catalogue in a library, people
use a search engine when browsing
the Web.
• A search engine assists the
researcher in sifting through the
near endless and constantly
changing information on the Web.

10. • Standard Search Engines
are crawler based.
• They crawl Web pages to
build lists of words that
are then indexed and
stored into a searchable
database
STANDARD SEARCH ENGINES

11. • Meta Search Engines:
send user requests to
other search engines then
displays the results in a
single list
META SEARCH ENGINES

12. Attempt your query in
different search engines.
The results may surprise
you!

13. SEARCH ENGINE
FEATURES
Features and support vary among the different search engines. When
choosing a search engine consider:
• Refinement support: ability to use Boolean, Phrase, and Field
searching
• Wild Card (Truncation) support: ability to substitute part of a word
or a whole word with “*”
• Stemming support: ability to find variants of terms such as, tense,
plural & singular form
• Size of database: how large the search engine's database is
• Feel and look: uncluttered and easy to use interface

14. IMPORTANT NOTE

15. BOOLEAN LOGIC: OR
The OR operator will find pages that include EITHER of the search
terms immediately adjacent to it.
 The query [ford OR dodge ] will return pages that contain
either of the terms ford or dodge.
The OR operator can be keyed using the | symbol
 The query [ford OR dodge ] and the
query [ford | dodge ] are equivalent.

16. BOOLEAN LOGIC: AND
The AND operator will find pages that include BOTH of the search
terms immediately adjacent to it.
 The query [ford AND dodge] will return only pages that
contain both of the terms ford and dodge.

17. BOOLEAN LOGIC: NOT
The NOT operator will find pages that do not include search term
immediately following it.
 The query [ford NOT dodge ] will return only pages that
contain the term ford and not the term dodge.
The NOT operator can be keyed using the - symbol
 The query [ford NOT dodge ] and the
query [ford -dodge ] are equivalent.

18. PHRASE SEARCHING
• Phrase Searching allows the researcher to query for
documents that contain an exact sentence or phrase as
opposed to being limited to only keywords.
• Phrase searching is performed by enclosing the phrase in
quotation marks (“”) to indicate to the search engine that is
should search for the terms in that particular order and wording
only.
 The query [ “abc 123” ] would return results containing abc
123 but not 123 abc.

19. PHRASE SEARCHING
Phrase searching is often used when searching for famous quotes,
proper names, recommendations, and forcing the inclusion of stop
words like or, it, the, etc.
 Proper Name [ “Jane Doe”]
 Famous Quote [ “to be or not to be”]
 Recommendations [ “best astronomy book” ]
*An Internet savvy teacher may even use phrase searching to detect
plagiarism!

20. FIELD SEARCHING
• The content of Web pages and other electronic records are
organized into separate fields.
• Where available, Search Engines can allow the researcher to
query for documents by directing the search engine to search
specific fields through a powerful method called Field Searching.

21. SEARCHING INURL:
The inurl: refinement is used to restrict the search to pages that
contain the query term in the page’s web address.
THE URL FIELD

22. INURL:
Scenario: You want to find the calendar of events for your
local university, Louisiana State University of Shreveport.

23. SEARCHING INTITLE:
The intitle: refinement is used to restrict the search to pages that
contain the query term in the title tag.
TITLE
TAGS

24. INTITLE:
Scenario: You need to do some research on global warming.

25. SEARCHING SITE:
The site: refinement is used to find web pages from a web site.
• Millions of websites are online and there are many
navigational differences among them. Using the site:
refinement is a great to search the site for the information
the researcher is looking for without leaving the search
engine.

26. SITE:
Scenario: You want to see if National Geographic has
information on Australia.

27. MORE FIELD SEARCHING
The link: refinement is used to find web pages that link to a web
page.
The cache: refinement is used to view the search engine’s cached
copy of a page
The related: refinement is used to find web pages that are similar to
another web page

28. SYMBOLS

29. GENERATING A SEARCH STRING
Combine Boolean operators, phrase searching, and symbols to create
a search string.
Scenario: You want to learn about the 2015 State of the Union
address you could try:
Scenario: You need to research the speed of the jaguar cat but you
keep getting results for the jaguar car. You could try:

30. Manipulate the search
string to manipulate the
results!

31. FINDING DOCUMENTS
Using the filetype: refinement you can search for documents on the
web by restricting the results to only the filetype you specify.
Some common file types are:
• filetype:pdf
• filetype:doc
• filetype:xls
Scenario: You need to conduct scientific research
but you aren’t sure how. You could try:

32. Try out those new advanced power searching techniques!
YOUR TURN!

33. PRACTICE PROBLEM
Your doing research and you need a news article on Information
Technology, from a government site, in the form of PDF, Word
document, or Excel.
• Create a search string that would help you narrow down the
results.
Play around with
different combinations
and see what you can
come up with!

34. PRACTICE PROBLEM
Look at the key words:
Let’s say I’d like an article on Information Technology, from a
government site, in the form of PDF, Word document, or Excel.
Here is an example of a search string you could use:
“information technology” site:gov
filetype:pdf | filetype:doc | filetype:xls

35. OTHER RESOURCES

36. EVALUATING SITES
You have the results, now what?
• What do you know about the items you’ve found online?
• How do you determine if the results of your Web hunt are
trash or treasure?
Evaluating sites is important because:
• Anyone can publish to the Web
• The Web is not regulated by a governing body
• The material on the Web does NOT have to be edited or
even true

37. C.A.R.S
Credibility
• Who is the author?
Accuracy
• Is the material complete, accurate and current?
Reasonableness
• Is the information non-biased and does it make sense?
Support
• Does the author cite sources and can you find other
sources to support the data found?

38. SUMMARY
• Keyword search use specific, relevant, professional terms
• Boolean operators refine search by including or excluding
terms
• Phrase search specify term groupings and order
• URL checking domain types help identify source type
• C.A.R.S. evaluate your sources
• Be safe! You never know where those Web pages have
been!

39. GO EXPLORE!
Please note I only briefly touched on a few topics I feel are
essential to internet research. I didn’t even cover these: