Use the Right Tool for the Job

    Before searching for information online, you should learn about the tools at your disposal.  The three main categories of search tools are search engines, search directories, and metacrawlers.
    Search engines use computer programs called bots or spiders to scour the Net for sites; when found, these sites are stored in a giant database,  Search directories, on the other hand, use actual humans to catalog and categorize sites.  Metacrawlers compile the results of multiple search engines and directories, delivering a comprehensive list of Web links.

    Which search tool is right for you?  Well, it depends on what kind of information you're looking for.  Directories work best when you're looking for general categories of information (sports, news, entertainment).  They tend to turn up the most relevant and popular sites by category, but they usually offer fewer listings than automated search engines.  Yahoo ( www.yahoo.com ) and LookSmart ( www.looksmart.com ) are recommended search directories.
    If you're looking for something very specific (likes facts about homily preparation in Urdu-speaking regions), you'll want to consult a search engine.  Search engines index more sites than search directories.  Since they index even the most obscure and useless of pages, it's best not to use them for broad search topics--they may return hundreds or even thousands of questionably relevant sites.
    Google (www. google.com), Fast (www.alltheweb.com), Excite ( www.excite.com ), Northern Light ( www.northernlight.com ), HotBot ( www.hotbot.com ), and AltaVista ( www.altavista.com ) are recommended search engines. 

    When you need to conduct a power search and have time to sort through the results, use a matacrawler.  They feed off the databases of the major search engines and provide thousands of search results.  The drawback: The results can be repetitive.  And if you thought search engines returned a lot of results, imagine what happens when you search four at once!  For more information on all of this check out, Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com).

Enter Better Search Terms

    You can search the Net more efficiently by using the advanced search functions available at many search engines.  The most useful ones include case-sensitive searches, Boolean searches, and complete-phrase searches.

    Case sensitivity:  If you search using uppercase letters (e.g., The White House rather than the white house), you'll get back pages containing words with the exact captialization you specified.  If you search using all lowercase letters, you'll get both capitalized and uncapitalized references.

    Boolean operators:  The words AND, NOT, OR and NEAR are all special keywords called Boolean operators.  They can help focus your searches and reduce the number of irrelevant results.  Say you're looking for information about the TV drama ER.  If you searched for tv or er, you might find many pages about television or emergency rooms, but not so many with specific info about the show ER.  You'd fare better if you used er AND tv as your search term.  In that example, the word AND (which must be typed in all caps) acts as the Boolean operator.  It tells a search engine to look only for pages that include both terms,  Similarly, OR can be used to tell a search engine to find pages containing at least one of the terms you specified.  NOT tells a search engine to find pages that contain the first term but not the second (e.g., spice NOT girls).  NEAR instructs a search engine to find Web pages containing two terms within ten words of each other.

    Complete phrases:  If you search on a multiple-word phrase, you might get results that contain just one of your multiple keywords.  You can avoid these results by using Boolean AND statements between each word, or simply by putting quotation marks around the phrase you want to search on.  (e.g., "the road less traveled").  Complete-phrase searches are especially helpful when you're looking for information on a particular person.  Enter "Karl Rahner"  (in quotes) to avoid seeing pages about other Karls (or Rahners).

Boolean Operators

Leading Web Search Engines

Specialized Search Engines

General and Specialized Reference

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Created by Eugene Hensell, OSB
Saint Meinrad School of Theology
Saint Meinrad, IN 47577
Last Updated July 21, 2006