Surfing simply means going from page to page, clicking on hyperlinks. Surfing is the most undirected, free-form way of navigating the Web, but can often be the most entertaining and informative way of stumbling onto new ideas and information.
If you begin at a good site on the Web, you will be able to "surf" through pages that are interesting to you and you may uncover some useful information.
When you search the Internet, you are not doing an active search-the search engine is not at that moment going out into cyberspace and looking for resources. Rather, you are searching an existing database of resources.
Many organizations and companies index information on the Internet. Some indices are built by programs that roam the web automatically, jumping from link to link, and indexing the pages they find. Other indices are compiled when a web site administrator (webmaster) registers the site with the index.
But because of the extraordinarily vast quantity and diversity of resources, there is no one single index that captures the entire Internet. So often, you will want and need to search several indices to find the information you desire.
In addition, the indices are built differently. Some indices look at every word on a web page, some only look at the title of the page, some use other processes to determine what words are important. That means that the same search can produce very different results on different indices.
Because you are searching an index, or database, of resources with a search engine, you need to keep the guidelines below in mind when you search:
There is no one perfect index of the Internet!!! There isn't even one perfect index of just the Web, so you must...
Engines have strengths & weaknesses. Understand their databases!
Breadth of the index. How many resources are indexed? Lycos has a broad index of over 19 million URLs or resources. Some other indexes aren't as broad. Breadth also relates to how many parts of cyberspace have been included in the index. InfoSeek includes several parts of cyberspace (several of the Internet systems) and WebCrawler focuses just on the World Wide Web.
Depth of the index. How detailed is the indexing procedure? Most search engines do not search every word of a resource! Usually, the title and headings are indexed. Sometimes, the first 20% or 20 lines are indexed as well. But each search engine produces its database differently and you need to realize that some search engines will not produce a resource as a hit if your keyword is buried deep inside that resource.
Currency of the index. When was the database last updated?
Relevancy of the hits. Does the ranking mean anything to you for this particular search? Engines produce a list of results, or hits, that are scored so that the resources that are most likely to be the ones you want are at the top of the list. Learn how the results are ranked for each engine you use. You'll find, quite frequently, that scores are not useful for many searches. Say, for example, that hits are ranked by the number of times the keyword is mentioned. If you're looking for anything about "chocolate," it may not be relevant to you whether a particular resource mentions chocolate only once or a zillion times, so you'd want to look at all the results that search engine found, not just the top ten. In other cases, the method of ranking and the search you are doing will mean that the ranking of hits is relevant to making your search more effective.
Ranking is very important when you are creating a page that you want people to be able to find. You will want to design your page so that it is the first hit produced on the keywords that people will use to find you. If you understand how the top search engines rank or score their searches, you can use the search engine's criteria as your criteria for what must be included on your page. Only then can you begin to design an effective web page. When the page is complete, you can register it or link it to most search engines and they will come to index your page. Because you've designed it well, the page will be in the "top ten" when someone does a keyword search to locate resources like yours.
Some Internet sites categorize their search results and allow you to browse through the categories, narrowing down to what you are looking for. One of the most popular sites on the 'Net is Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), which is a browse-able index.
Begin with a menu, directory, or "table of contents" and pick a broad category to begin "surfing with a purpose." Follow that link to the next category, slightly more specific. Narrow down your search at each step, and you will reach your goal.
Search engines provide a more directed approach toward finding pages in an index. You enter one or more keywords and the index produces a list of related sites, or hits. The hits are often ranked either by date or relevancy to your keywords.
Every search engine differs, but you should always approach a search engine with the following steps:
Click the "Search" button on your browser or enter the URL directly. Some of the more popular search engines include:
Look for the keyword entry box and the search button.
If you're searching for information about employee benefits, don't start with keywords like "benefits for vice presidents." Rather begin with "human resources," then add the keyword "compensation" or maybe "benefits." Narrow down slowly. Because search engines do not generally search every word of a resource to create their index, you'll want to make sure you haven't eliminated the perfect resource by starting too narrow. A perfect resource may be called "Everything You Need to Know About Compensation" but the search engine may not have picked up the fact that deep inside is a section on benefits.
Continuing with the human resources line, if you are looking for how much to pay someone, use the keyword "salary" not "pay." Salary is more distinctive.
Have Roget's Thesaurus nearby, because while the word "salary" might leap to your mind, someone else may have used words like "compensation," "remuneration," etc. and you want to repeat your search with those keywords.
Have you tried each accepted variation of a keyword? Fly fishing, fly-fishing, and flyfishing are three accepted (or at least widely-used) variations of one word. Theatre and theater is another example.
Getting the idea that you'll have to repeat your search several times just within one search engine, before you even repeat your search with other search engines? You got it!
Each engine has different ways of treating your keywords. Does it search for a page with any one of your words or must all words exist in a page? If all words, must they be in the same order, spelled exactly the same way, or can they have variations?
Each search engine will have different capabilities. Read the tips, help files, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Readme files, etc. for each search engine. Look for buttons like "Tips," "Advanced Search," "PowerSearch," and, especially, "Help." These will allow you to take advantage of a search engine more fully.
Below is a listing of some of the more common options.
hOw YOu type GENERALLY dOESn’t MaTtEr. But you can force some search engines to do a case sensitive search so that a search for "Gates" produces only Bill Gates, and not the gates of hell or the pearly gates.
Boolean is a mathematical/logical term that simply refers to the use of operators like "and," "or," "not," and the like to aid your searches. Some search engines let you use Boolean operators.
- Any = "OR" (scholarship grant)
If you are doing an "any" or Boolean "or" search on the keywords "scholarship grant" you will expand your hits because only one of the words must be present to produce a hit, so you'll get documents that deal with scholarships as well as documents that deal with grants. Sometimes you don't want that, though. For example, search for "travel Caribbean" and you will get every resource about travel and every resource about the Caribbean. That's when you use...
- All = "AND" (science education elementary)
An "all" or Boolean "and" search means all terms must be present (though not in any particular order!) to produce a hit. "Travel Caribbean" will produce only resources that contain the words travel and Caribbean.
- NOT (river rafting might be entered as: whitewater NOT Clinton)
Some search engines let you use the Boolean operator "not" to narrow your search. Looking for aluminum, copper, and steel? Try "metal NOT music." Snakes? Try "Python NOT Monty." River rafting trips? Try "Whitewater not Clinton."
- ( ) to group: (scholarship OR grant) AND art versus (scholarship OR grant) NOT Ulysses
Use parentheses ( ) to group items so that they will be used as one criteria. For example: "(scholarship or grant) and art" will find any article that has the word "art" and has either the word "scholarship" or the word "grant" in it. "(scholarship or grant) not Ulysses" will find resources about scholarships or grants without producing Ulysses S. Grant's biography as a hit.
E.g.: auto
- literal: auto
- substring: auto, automobile, automotive, etc.
Search engines treat your keyword very differently. Say you use the keyword "auto." Some search engines treat it literally and will produce a hit only if it is indexed under the word "auto." Others will treat the keyword as a substring, producing hits that are indexed under any of these terms: auto, automobile, automotive, etc.
Wildcards replace letters (* at end for any letters, ? for one letter)
- auto*
- national defen?e
Wildcards replace letters, just like in DOS or Windows filename searches. The asterisk (*) stands for "any combination of letters" but it can only be used at the end of a keyword. For example a search for "cat*" will produce hits for cat, cats, Catholic, cathode, and catatonic among others. Asterisks are useful when you want your keyword to be a substring and the search engine only treats keywords literally. If you are using a "literal" search engine, you may be able to use a wildcard and search for "auto*" to find automotive, automobile, auto, etc. Or you can use it when spelling is uncertain like the variations of theatre and theater-search with "theat*" as your keyword.
The wildcard ? stands for one letter, and can be used anywhere. If you are comparing British and American defense policies, search for "defen?e" because Brits spell it "defence" and we spell "defense." The asterisk allows you to cover your bases!
When you do a search for Wall Street with your standard "and" search, you will find all sorts of hits about ancient cities with walls and streets, architectural resources about building streets and walls... because an "and" search doesn't mean the keywords have to be in order. Some search engines will let you do an exact phrase search (often by enclosing keywords in quotes) so you can search for "Wall Street."
Some engines allow you to specify that keywords have to be near each other, though maybe not as accurately in order as an exact phrase search. So you could search for [manag* health care] and find articles where the keywords (we used a wildcard here so you'd find management, managed, health, care) pretty close to each other.
Very few search engines let you assign weights to your keywords. But when they do it can be very powerful. If you are breeding hunting dogs, you could use these keywords and weights, for example: dog 1000, canine 1000, hunting 500, sport 500, breed 800, AKC 300. The weights help a word produce a hit.
Some engines give you control as to how hits are sorted (relevancy, date, etc.), how many hits are shown per screen, and how much detail is shown on each hit.
Get a feeling for how useful a search engine is for your type of work, how easy it is to use, how up to date it is. Look for "help" buttons that will tell you how the index is generated.
One of my favorite search sites is
All In One because it links you to so many other search engines. By the way, I do recommend clicking on the name of the search engine and going to it, rather than searching directly through All In One. That will allow you to take fuller advantage of each engine's features, as we just saw.Also look at the
Small Business Administration's list of useful web sites, which is great for individuals, organizations, clubs, and businesses large and small.