Lesson conducted during MCO (covid-19) for form 2 class

1. Questions and Answer Searches
Question and answer searching leverages the considerable power of phrases to
get Internet search engines to return only results that match a multi-word string of characters.
The longer the phrase, the fewer the matches and more specific the results. A typical question
phrase would be "who invented physics", and a typical answer phrase would be "logic was
invented by".
Either questions or answers can return good results, although question phrases tend to return
information written more in a tutorial mode since explanations are often prefaced with their
question, and questions on messages boards, list archives, and Usenet newsgroups have often
already been answered by others - a phenomenon which created the Frequently Asked Questions.
Whether using a question or answer query, try to find as specific a wording as possible to filter the
results down to just the pages with the information you are looking for. If the phrase is actually
too specific and there are no results, then try different and looser wording until you get some
matches. A few example searches are listed below:
Questions Answers
"how do magnets work" "magnets work by"
"what is a spark plug" "spark plugs work"
"how far is a light year" "a light year is"
"how to build a deck" "building a deck"
"how to grow tomatoes" "growing tomatoes"

2. Add Search Filters With OR
You can use the OR option to include several different options in one search by appending
keywords to a normal AND query. Useful when you want to narrow down a broad category into a
sub-genre that can be defined by a few representative keywords. A couple of example OR
searches are shown below:
Sparrows. You may wish to search for information on sparrows, but just the Harris, Le Conte, or
Savannah sparrows. In the following example, the OR clause is joined to the rest of the query by
an AND clause, so at least one of the sparrow types listed must be included on any page returned.
bird AND sparrow AND (harris OR conte OR savannah)
Romantic painting. You may wish to get more information on the romantic painting period, but
particularly on the painters Corot, Delacroix, or Géricault. You can narrow down your search to
those three with the following query:
"romantic painting" AND (corot OR delacroix OR gericault)

3. Use NOT To Exclude Keywords
You can greatly narrow down your search results with the NOT operator. If you get too many
responses, try adding NOT clauses using keywords from the sites you don't want to be returned.
You can add more NOT keywords if you need to screen out more sites.
However, remember that most search engines implement the NOT operator as a minus sign, so
that for example if you want to say "NOT keyword" you need to type "-keyword". For example,
the following search will block any page that contains the words "art", "car", or "auto", maximizing
the chances that the pages returned will be about live mustang horses.
horse AND mustang AND -art AND -car AND -auto
If you are getting a lot of irrelevant sites from the same Internet domain, then you can filter them
all at once with the URL option by adding the domain name to the NOT clause. For example, the
following search will block any site with the word "motorcycle" in its URL.
horse AND mustang AND -art AND -car AND -auto and -inurl:motorcycle

4. Search For Wildcards
The wildcard feature was used to shorten search queries and return more results, but is no longer
supported by most search engines.
Many search engines that started in the 1990's (excepting Google) initially supported the wildcard
feature. The intent was to enable easy searching for words with more than one ending with a star
"*", as in a search for "dog*" to designate "dog", "dogs", "dogged", etc. However, the use of this
feature had to be specifically designed into the search engine at some overhead, and is generally
not considered worth the cost by most search engines in operation today.
As an historical example, the first search below returned about 15% more results than the second
search on Alta Vista when that engine supported it, showing that wildcards enabled construction
of Internet searches that were more concise and efficient at the same time:
movie AND chaplin AND comed*
movie AND chaplin AND (comedy OR comedies OR comedian)

5. Comparison Test Search Engines
It is sometimes useful to test search engines to see how they compare on a standard set of tests.
You can determine the breadth of coverage of each search engine by trying successively more
complex queries, find out which sites have the largest databases, and get a feel for which sites
return better content for the types of searches that interest you.
For example, the following list of test searches let you compare the breadth of coverage of four
different Internet search engines. You can try several searches on the same site, or the same
search on different sites, and compare the number and type of pages they return.
Search Google Bing Yahoo
history Search Search Search
history AND ancient Search Search Search
history AND modern Search Search Search
history AND modern AND american AND west
AND gold AND fire
Search Search Search
collecting Search Search Search
collecting AND antique Search Search Search
collecting AND art Search Search Search
collecting AND art AND greek AND sculpture
AND angel
Search Search Search

6. More Web Search Information
The following sites provide more information on searching the web:
Finding Information On The Net - The substance of the Internet Workshops from the Teaching
Library at the University of California at Berkeley.
Guide to Effective Searching of the Internet - Comprehensive, sixty topic tutorial.
The Information Research FAQ - Provides information on how to search the Internet for United
Nations Documents, FAQ's & Newsgroups, Theses & Dissertations, Patents, Government
Resources, Newswires & News Databases, and other information.
The Professional Research FAQ - Describes how to perform professional research using the
Internet
Patent Research FAQ - Describes the tools and concepts used in patent research.
Search Engine Features - Search features and functions of leading search engines.
Search Tools Chart - Information and search options for leading search indexes.
Using the Internet for Research FAQ - Describes how to perform searches for research.

7. Search Engines
The WAIS search engine receives a user's question, searches its database for documents most
relevant to the question, and returns a relevance-ranked list of documents back to the user. Each
document is given a score from 1 to 1000, based on how well it matched the user's question
(how many words it contained, their importance in the document, etc.).
- The WAIS Search Engine.
The first popular Internet search engine was the Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) system.
The pages linked below describe some of the current leading search sites, including a link to their
advanced search page and a feature summary. Most of these sites also provide both a web
directory and a search engine:
 AltaVista
 Excite
 Google *
 HotBot
 Go.com
 Lycos
 Yahoo *

8. Resources. Related resources are listed below:
 Usenet archives - lists sites for searching the Usenet newsgroups.
 Search Engine Sizes - lists the size of leading search engine's databases.
 Ranking.com - Provides a ranking of web sites by popularity of access, a metric significantly
driven by the traffic from leading search engines.
 Specialized search sites provide more targeted search functionality.

9. Homework
1. How do magnets work?
2. What is a spark plug?
3. How far is a light year?
4. How to prepare a tuna sandwich?
5. How to grow tomatoes?