In pre-computer days, a library's card catalog was a chest of drawers that contained a card for each entry. On each card was the entry's name, writer, publisher, and other information. In other words, a card catalog was a database; each card was a record and each piece of information was a field.
Every search tool is made up of one or more databases that contain records and fields. With electronic databases, you can isolate the information you want by specifying the fields you want to search. Cheryl Gould suggests, that "the database of a search tool can be visualized as a gigantic never-ending three-dimensional tic-tactoe board with unlimited boxes. Each box contains a piece of information that relates to information in other boxes. The relationships built between the pieces of information are created by the database provider and serve as one of the ways the search tools differentiate themselves."
Take time to learn how a search engine works and take full advantage of the capabilities it offers. The best way to do this is to use help screens. Before you begin using a search tool, consult the Help, How To, or Tips page linked to its front page. Each search tool has one.
1. Become familiar with several major search engines. That way when a research topic does not show up in one engine, you should be able to find it using another.
2. Study the simple and advanced instructions, and review them regularly - Search engines change constantly, usually for the better.
A search engine is an enormous database of websites compiled by a software robot that seeks out and indexes websites, and sometimes other Internet resources as well. There are thousands of search engines, and they vary in speed, skill, depth of indexing, size of database, advanced search features, and presentation of results. Every search engine's method of searching is proprietary; the depth and breadth and realm of its database is unique; and each search engine possesses its particular strengths and idiosyncrasies.
Data is collected according to a unique mix of criteria. These criteria - also called variables - are weighted and trigger tradeoffs that make each database's search results dramatically different from its counterparts'. For example, when you use Teoma, you are using one database that was organized in a specific way, and when you use Google, you are using another database, organized differently. Consequently, you may get wildly different results. This is true for the many different search engines.
An eye-popping number of search engines claim to be the best, the largest, or the most thorough. Several claim to be comprehensive. You can ignore the claims because every search engine database is woefully incomplete. The top search tools indexed less than twenty percent of the available Internet material. Despite the Internet's dramatic growth and the increased sophistication of the web search tools, those percentages are probably about the same today.
Because each search engine is constructed differently, they may return different results, even if you use the exact same phrase or words. For the best results, never do just one search, always do the same search using several different search tools.
When you use a search engine, you are not searching the entire Web for the latest information. What you are doing is searching the full-text index of that search engine. In other words, you are not searching the Web itself, just what pages and websites the search engine has already categorized and stored. Search engines consist of three major elements - the crawler, the indexer, and the query process.
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Note: This article was sent to us by: Ryan Heidels at 08272010
1. Special portals of search engines are known as vortals
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