Surfing the World Wide Web

Surfing the World Wide Web

The Web has been likened to a library lacking a card catalog—there is no central authority that lists all possible sites accessible via the Internet. This results in surfing—gliding in an unplanned fashion from home page to home page. There are, however, two organized ways to find information on the WWW—general-purpose search tools such as browsers and search engines, and specially designed tools, such as shopping bots:

First are Web browsers. You can search by pointing your Web browser toward a uniform resource locator (URL)—the Websites address or domain name, which identifies a particular location (i.e., Web server and file on that server of the site where the information you need is located). You can enter the URL for that site in the search window (by clicking “File- Open Window”) of your Web browser, which takes you directly to that site’s home page. (The original six top-level domains [TLDs] widely used in the U.S were: .com [commercial or “dot.com”], .edu [education], .net [network operations], .gov [U.S. government], .mil [U.S. military], and .org [organization. In 2001 to these were added .biz [commercial or business], .info [unrestricted by organizational type], .name [for individuals], .pro [for accountants, lawyers, and other professionals], .aero [for the air transport industry], .museum [for museums], and .coop [for cooperatives]).

A second organized way to surf the Web is to use a search engine—a computerized directory that allows users to search the WWW for information in a systematic way. The big four sites are Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and America Online. Others include Alta Vista, Excite, HotBot (gives you a choice among three other search engines too), Infoseek, and Lycos, among others. Each search engine contains collections of links to documents throughout the world, and each uses its own indexing system to help you locate the information you are looking for. Some search for titles or headers of documents, while others search words in the documents, and still others search other indexes or directories.

All search engines allow you to enter one or more key words or search terms into the text box. They then return listings of hyperlinks. Alternatively, you can click on a list of broad topics (art, business, entertainment, etc.) to go to subdirectories or else home pages. Most search engines use a best match search process and present search output (the “retrieval set”) in order ranked by relevance, based on: how many of the search items were found in the document, how often the search items were found in the document, where in the document the search items were found, and proximity of the terms to one another.

It is not uncommon to find a large number of hits; if this is the case, the rule of thumb is to scan the first 50 hits, and if these don’t provide useful information, to consider redesigning the search strategy. The retrieval set usually takes the form of a list of Web pages representing the records retrieved, ranked in order of their potential relevance to the query and presenting a certain number (say, ten) at a time. Each of these incorporates a hypertext link to the source document.

There are seven types of search engines:

(a) Hierarchical search engines or directories add value through human intervention in the assignment of subject headings to records in databases. In a hierarchical search engine, all sits fit into categories. In addition, all sites are evaluated prior to inclusion. Such sites only contain submissions from users—they don’t perform a search of the Web—hence, they are not comprehensive, omitting a large portion of the information on the Web. Websites creators may their page for inclusion in the evaluation process. The maintenance of such directories is a labor-intensive process—therefore such search services are selective in the sites that are included. However, such selection reduces the amount of garbage one often encounters in an Internet search. Yahoo! is an example of a directory built on a hierarchical, subject-oriented guide. Others include Ask Jeeves, Excite, LookSmart, and Lycos. All sites have to fit into a certain category/subject heading and subcategories (e.g., Stolichnaya vodka is indexed as Business and Economy/Companies/Drinks/Alcoholic/Vodka). Going to Business and Economy/Companies/Sports/Snowboarding/Board Manufacturers gives almost 60 companies that sell snowboards on the Web. Searching is via menus of these subject headings and/or through keyword searching.

2. 
   Collection search engines. Alta Vista, Fast, Google, and Northern Light are examples of search
   

2. 
   Concept search engines. Excite is an example of a concept search engine—they use a concept, rather than a word or a phrase, as the basis for the search. To narrow the original search, one clicks on one of the sites found in that search to do another search. The percentage key gives the user an idea of how close a particular site is to his or her concepts. For example, Ask Jeeves is a natural language search engine—it allows users to type in natural-language questions. Concept search engines can be a relatively efficient and focused way of searching. The disadvantage is that they aren’t as comprehensive as collection search engines.
   
3. 
   Meta-engines/meta search engines/mega-search engines search multiple search engines simultaneously for words and phrases. They then combine results, remove duplicate entries, and /present a single listing. Examples include MetaCrawler, Dogpile, and Debriefing (the latter is maintained by librarians who are constantly refining and upgrading the site). Some of these can be found in the list of search engines when you click on the “search” button of your browser, and others are found by typing into the Web browser “www.searchenginename.com (e.g., www.dogpile.com; www.debriefing.com). They are a quick way of searching across several search tools, although they might not support some of the more sophisticated search facilities. There are also specialty search engines that limit searches to specific topic areas such as law, business, and medicine, as well as Web community sites such as www.theglobe.com.
   
4. 
   Robot search engines/search bots. This newest type of search engine acts like meta search tools and searches many Internet search engines in parallel. They differ from meta search tools in that they are loaded at the local workstation rather than operating in client server mode. Also, they use robots (“bots”) or intelligent agents to roam the Internet in search of information. Shopping bots are specialized search bots designed to locate and compare products. They take a query, visit shops that might have the sought product, bring the user the results, and present them in a consolidated, compact format that facilitates comparison shopping. Many also provide access to an order form. Some shopping bots are comprehensive in coverage (e.g., MySimon.com, NetMarket.com, Bizrate.com, Clickthebutton.com, Dealtime.com, and Planetretail.com) while others focus on a specific product range (e.g., BargainBot for books, Bargain Finder Agent for Music and CDs, Gift finder for gifts, Price Scan for computer software and hardware, and insuremarket.com for insurance needs). Most shopping bots claim to eliminate the searching necessary to identify the right product at the best price.
   

(f) Search engines for specific sites. E-tailers with large catalogs of products, such as Amazon.com, need a search engine to support users in navigating their way through the cyber-store.

Some search engines (e.g., Yahoo! and Lycos) serve as portals (entry/starting points) for Internet exploration, and they typically offer e-mail, news, search, and games. America Online is a well-organized Web portal from which a Web surfer can link/jump to many locations highlighted by AOL. Commercial Websites pay portals to be featured in this way. Such portals can be vertical—serving one industry or market (such as an ethnic market) or horizontal—serving multiple industries and markets.

Which search engine should you use? The best search engines cover about 30 percent of the estimated pages out there. Drs. Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles of the NEC Research Institute of Princeton, NJ found northern Light, Snap, and Alta Vista as reported in the July 8, 1999 issue of the scientific journal Nature to index more of the Web (16%) than other popular search engines. In terms of freshness (the time it takes a search engine to index changes made to pages) they found Alta Vista, Excite, and Hotbot to be the most up-to-date search engines. Also popular are Yahoo!, GoTo.com, MSN, and Lycos. However, by 2002, Google had become so dominant that to “Google” something or someone—that is, to search the Web for that thing or person—had become considered a verb.

It is a good idea to use multiple search tools since there is surprisingly little overlap between the major search engines. You will get different results with different search engines because retailer and manufacturers pay to be linked to search engines. Meta-engines are efficient since they search multiple search engines simultaneously.

There are also specialty search engines that limit searches to specific topic areas such as law, business, and medicine as well as Web community sites such as www.theglobe.com. These niche or “vertical” search engines only search within a narrow band of interest. They are sometimes called vortals (a contraction of “vertical” and “portal”), and they might also offer expert reviewers and provide the “best” recommended sites in a given area.

(g) Blog search engines such as Technorati, Blogdigger, BlogPulse, blog.iderocket.com, or Google Blog Search. If you’re looking for very current information (such as today’s buzz), these are useful.

Searching is on the basis of full text and/or product categories.

1. 
   Get to the search engine, either by clicking on the “search” button in the browser or by typing the search engine’s URL (e.g., www.yahoo.com) in the search window.
   
2. 
   Enter your search request (keyword[s]) in the search engine’s search window. Although different search engines use slightly different rules for controlling the parameters of your search, there are certain rules of Boolean logic/search language (remember the “new math” diagrams that illustrated the inclusivity or exclusivity of sets with AND, OR, and AND NOT?) that can generally be used :
   

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  Use a plus sign (+) in front of a word to indicate that it must appear in each Web page of the query results (e.g., hotels+San+Fransisco). Without the plus sign the word isn’t considered mandatory.
  
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  Use a minus sign (-) in front of any word that shouldn’t be included in any Web page in the search results (e.g., Cars-Ford)
  
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  Enclose a multiword phrase in quotation marks to tell the search engine to list only sites that contain those words in that exact order (e.g., “Seattle Preparatory School”).
  
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  AND works like the plus sign, indicating that all the words joined by AND must appear in the document (e.g., to find documents that contain the words wizard, oz, and movie, enter: wizard AND Oz AND movie).
  
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  OR joins words, at least one of which must appear in the document (e.g., to find documents that contain the word dog or puppy, type: dog OR puppy). OR is often used to broaden a search (e.g.: (travel OR tourism OR cruises OR cruising OR vacations OR vacationing OR vacationers) AND (Caribbean OR Bermuda OR Jamaica OR Virgin Islands))
  
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  AND NOT or OR NOT is similar to the minus sign and is used to exclude words in the document, words that are likely to match your search requirements but have nothing to do with the search topic. (Thus, to find documents that contain the word pets but not the word dogs, enter: pets AND NOT dogs; e.g.: Dolphins NOT NFL).
  
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  NEAR should be used when words should be near each other (e.g., Moon NEAR River).
  

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  () Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together (e.g., to find documents containing the word fruit and either banana or apple type “fruit AND (banana OR apple”).
  
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  Title search allows you to search for titles of web documents (e.g., “title:Mars” or “t:Mars” will retrieve all documents with the word “Mars”).
  
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  * Wild card (e.g., eco* will return economy, economics, ecology, etc.)
  

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  Be specific. Tying in “DVD Players Reviews” will give you a better set of results than the more general “DVD Players.”
  
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  Add quotation marks. Keep exact phrases and proper names intact by enclosing them in quotation marks. Use words most likely to be used (e.g., try “John F. Kennedy” and “born” rather than “John F. Kennedy” and “birth date”).
  

3. 
   After typing the search request, click on the search button. (The search engine then searches the entire Web or a subset of the Web to locate sites meeting your search parameters.)
   
4. 
   In a period of several seconds to up to a minute or more, the search engine returns a list of sites containing the information that meets your criteria. Look at the top or bottom of the current page to see how many sites are listed. If there are too many, you can either just look at those at the top of the list (click on a link to go to a document) since those should be the best matches, or start over and narrow your search (e.g., by typing in additional terms, using AND, or using NOT).