According to Living Internet, “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.”

Living Internet offers further information and examples for using question and answer searches:

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”

With practice, you’ll develop a sense for which sites are legitimate and which are not. But if you’re new to online search or you’d simply like a practical technique for evaluating any Web page and the information it contains, she says in her book Web Search Garage (Upper Saddle River, NJ” Prentice Hall Professional Technical Reference, 2005), 108, try asking these six questions:

1. Where does this page reside? If the domain is .edu or .gov or .mil, “you can generally give it a little more credibility….You also need to consider whether the site resides on its own domain or not. I tend to automatically give a little bit more credibility to a site that has its own domain rather than a site hosted on a free Web service…”
2. Who made the statement? “When a site is on its own domain, you can get some additional information about the author by looking to see who registered the domain (you can do domain register lookups at http://www.domainsearch.com/).” Also look for an “About This Site” or “About Us” page on the site.
3. Why are they making this statement? “If you’re reviewing the statements on a site, consider why they’re being made…to sell something? To get you to support a cause? To reinforce an argument? To teach you something?”
4. What are they doing to establish the truth of the statement? “Generally speaking, the more ‘out there’ a statement is the more I’m going to look to some kind of sourcing for it…Of course, sources vary in their credibility… When you see a citation or a source, go look it up…”
5. How long have they been online? “Was (the site) thrown up twelve minutes ago in response to a current trend, or has it been up for several years? You can get some of this information from the domain registration information. Sometimes sites date their content, or have a ‘last update’ note on their site, which can also give you some information…If a site has been sitting dormant for months )and in some cases years), I will tend to give it less credibility…”
6. What are other sites saying about them? “Do a link check in a full-text search engine and see who is linking to the site and what they’re saying. If no one’s linking to a site, it might be very new, so don’t take that as a knock against it. But do pay attention to news stories (especially very credible institutions) and what they say about the site.”

In her book Web Search Savvy: Strategies and Shortcuts for Online Research (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 28, Friedman explains that “Boolean logic is named for George Boole, a 19th-century British mathematician who merged algebra and logic which, for our purposes, determines the way information on the Internet is searched for and retrieved. Boolean logic allows the user to include operators (also called connectors or joiners) in a search to retrieve fewer and more meaningful results.”

Boolean operators, she says, are “and,” “or,” “not,” and “near,” and they work in the following ways:

“AND”
Putting AND between words in your search tells the search engine you want it to return links to documents containing both (or all) words together on a page. For example, the names Laurel and Hardy would naturally appear together on some Web sites, since the two were a comedy team. Typing laurel AND hardy tells AltaVista you want all documents containing the words laurel and hardy. You may get links to pages about the comic actors Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, but by using lowercase letters you’ll likely also get pages that make reference to bay leaves and hardy chrysanthemums. How might you narrow your search, then? Two options are worth trying. First, type your search using uppercase letters for the actors’ names…You could further minimize your search results by specifying language, a range of dates, or adding keywords that pertain to specific information.

“OR”
Using OR in your search strategy widens the results. Type sharks OR fish and you tell the search engine to find those pages containing either the word “sharks” or the word “fish. ” The words do not necessarily have to appear together on the page. This is helpful if you are searching for as many pages as possible.

“AND NOT”
Most search engines also let the user exclude things using the operator NOT, or in the case of AltaVista “and not.” For example, the search results for Truman AND NOT Roosevelt on the AltaVista page would include pages that refer to Truman but exclude those containing Roosevelt, even if those same pages also contained Truman’s name.

“NEAR”
You may be able to call up a Web site by a identifying a combination of words and their proximity to one another. Say, for instance, you are looking for a site related to the professional golfer Tiger Woods. His first and last names are likely to appear on a wide range of sites. “Woods” could be on pages related to forests or parks and “tiger” might appear on pages related to wildlife, for instance. To avoid those kinds of sites, you can use the NEAR function of a search engine. AltaVista allows the user to identify sites where words appear within 10 words of each other. By typing “Tiger Woods” NEAR golf, you are telling the search engine to find sites where the name Tiger Woods (remember that by placing it in quotation marks or parentheses and using capitalization, you are asking for an exact match) appears within 10 words of “golf.”

The NEAR operator is also quite helpful when you’re looking for a person. Since proper names on lists are sometimes indexed by last name, use NEAR to find variations on a name. For example, a search phrased as John NEAR Doe will find Doe, John, and John Q. Doe.

Friedman adds that “some simple searches allow some use of Boolean logic using the plus sign (+) for AND, and the minus sign (-) for AND NOT. However, simple searches do not offer the additional strategies discussed above.”

For more of Friedman’s online search strategies and shortcuts, click here.

According to Bare Bones 101, a University of South Carolina Beaufort Library site offering excellent guidance for using the Internet, a good first step in Creating a Search Strategy is to ask yourself this question:

What do I want to do?

1. Browse?
2. Locate a specific piece of information?
3. Retrieve everything I can on the subject?

Your answer will determine how you conduct your search and what tools you will use.

1. If you’re browsing and trying to determine what’s available in your subject area, start out by selecting a subject directory like Yahoo! Then, enter your search keyword(s) into one of the metasearch engines, such as Vivisimo, just to see what’s out there.
2. If you’re looking for a specific piece of information, go to a major search engine such as Google, or to a specialized database such as Bureau of the Census (for statistics).
3. If you want to retrieve everything you can on a subject, try the same search on several search engines. Also, don’t forget to check resources off the Web, such as books, newspapers, journals and other print reference sources. Bare Bones 101 also has some useful tips for creating your search statement.

When structuring your query, keep the following tips in mind:

• Be specific
  EXAMPLE: Hurricane Hugo
• Whenever possible, use nouns and objects as keywords
  EXAMPLE: fiesta dinnerware plates cups saucers
• Put most important terms first in your keyword list; to ensure that they will be searched, put a +sign in front of each one
  EXAMPLE: +hybrid +electric +gas +vehicles
• Use at least three keywords in your query
  EXAMPLE: interaction vitamins drugs
• Combine keywords, whenever possible, into phrases
  EXAMPLE: “search engine tutorial”
• Avoid common words, e.g., water, unless they’re part of a phrase
  EXAMPLE: “bottled water”
• Think about words you’d expect to find in the body of the page, and use them as keywords
  EXAMPLE: anorexia bulimia eating disorder
• Write down your search statement and revise it before you type it into a search engine query box
  EXAMPLE: +”south carolina” +”financial aid” +applications +grants

• The Internet is a self-publishing medium. It is not a library of evaluated publications selected by professionals. Rather, the Internet is a bulletin board containing everything from the definitive to the spurious. Everything, everything must be analyzed for its appropriateness for research use
• Before you select a search tool, always think about your topic and what you are trying to find. Once you begin your research, be sure to try out a handful of sites. Don’t rely on a single site or type of site.
• Don’t just Google everything! Google is great, but there are other useful tools on the Web, too. Google has become so popular that many people use this tool exclusively, and miss out on others that might be more useful for their particular search.
• Three major resources for locating Internet materials are the subject directory, the search engine, and content on the deep Web. These are useful for different types of queries. Be sure you understand the differences.
• It is very helpful to understand the principles of Boolean search logic when using a search engine on the Web.
• When you enter more than one word in a Web search engine, the space between the words has a logical meaning that directly affects your results. This is known as the default syntax.
• When using Web search engines, a de facto search language has emerged especially for basic search (i.e., main screen) interfaces. When in doubt, use the following syntax:
  • + for mandatory words: +birds    +migration
  • phrases within quotations: “human rights”
• If you have too many search results, or results that are not relevant:
  • Add concept words
  • Use vocabulary that is specific to your topic, e.g., Honda rather than cars.
  • Link appropriate terms with the Boolean AND ( + ) so that each term is required to appear in the record
  • Use term proximity operators if they are available
  • Narrow your search to individual parts of the Web page such as title, first page level, etc.
  • Use the Boolean NOT to keep out records containing terms you don’t want
• If you have too few search results:
  • Drop off the least important concept(s) to broaden your subject
  • Use more general vocabulary
  • Add alternate terms or spellings for individual concepts and connect with the Boolean OR
  • Try the option available on some engines to find related documents to one or more of your relevant hits.

For additional checklist tips from SUNY plus links to deeper information on the Internet research guidelines above, click here.

BookSpot, Readerville, BookPage, Salon, January Magazine and Literati. In addition to lists of books in special genres, SSPL offers links to other library databases where you can search for fiction (adult and young adult) series and sequels, resources for book discussion groups, and information on authors and literary criticism.Do you like to go for the gold? Many web sites feature books which have won various awards. BookWeb lists recipients of The American Book Awards, which recognize “the excellence and multicultural diversity of American writing.” Salt Lake County (Utah) Library Services connects readers to a wide range of prizewinners in general fiction, mystery, romance, horror, science fiction and fantasy, and more. And American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association Booklists & Book Awards provides links to winners of Alex, Odyssey and other awards as well as special booklists for reluctant young adult readers and college-bound youth.Finally,

The Book Report Network brings together “a growing number of websites that provide original book content — author interviews, reviews and commentary — along with interactive elements such as polls, questions and contests.” Among the flagship site’s special features are genre-specific sections and a “Word of Mouth” area where readers can review and rate titles. Network affiliate sites include Authors on the Web, Teenreads, and Kidsreads.Bookmark the booklovers’ resources you like best, and you’ll find that a great read is always just a click away!

Greg R. Notess calls it “The Lost Obvious.”

In his book Teaching Web Search Skills (Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc., 2006) 166, he says, “The second page of search results is a blind spot for far too many searchers. This obvious expansion of search results is lost to many users, and without it, they may miss a good deal of information.”

Notess explains, “Most search engines default to displaying 10 results and cluster their results to that only one or two records per Web site will be included in those first 10. Unfortunately, most users never look beyond the clustered top 10. Blame David Letterman and his Top 10 lists or blame the search engines for giving so few results by default…Gary Price considers results beyond the first 10 to be part of the invisible Web since so few users ever look that far.”

Searching beyond the initial results is simple: just click on the “next” button to see the second set of hits returned. He also suggests exploring the advanced search option “from which searchers can get up to 100 results” or personalization “which, like the advanced search, can allow up to 100 results to be set as the default.”

Another strategy is needed, Notess says, to find the third or fourth results. “Most search engines cluster the results and provide access to the other hits from the same site under a link labeled ‘More Results from’. Unfortunately, that link is usually at the bottom of the record and in a different (often lighter) color, so it mostly goes unseen.”

Because they are a form of unique identifier, phrases are very useful at filtering search results to just pages that contain that exact, specific string of characters.

The longer the phrase, the fewer and more relevant the results returned… until the phrase is so specific there are actually no pages that match. In the middle is the perfect search query.

Some of the very best phrases are full person names. While there may be many people named Winston, or Spencer, or Churchill, there is only one savior of liberal democracy named Winston Spencer Churchill. Therefore, if you search for that name as a phrase, you ensure that all pages returned contain that exact name:

“winston spencer churchill”You can also add phrases to existing searches. For example, the following search only returns pages that contain the word “biography” and the exact phrase “mozart was born”:

biography AND “mozart was born”You can combine several phrases with the and operator to make kind of a meta-phrase and greatly narrow the number of pages returned:

“sherlock holmes” AND “221 B, Baker Street”You can widen a search by looking for several phrases at once, by combining several phrases with the or operator in a separate term in brackets:

biography AND (“mozart was born” OR first learned” OR “when mozart was”)
“richard burton” AND ( “doctor livingstone, I presume” OR “dr. livingstone, I presume”)Song lyrics are great unique phrases, if you can get them right. You can either search for a long phrase if you know the whole thing, or several short phrases combined with AND:

“how many roads must a man walk down”
“anything goes” AND “glimpse of stocking” AND “good authors too”The best phrases are specific enough to get the pages you want, while filtering out pages you don’t want. At the same time, they should be common enough to actually be found. For example, the following phrase is too specific, because there isn’t any text on the Internet that contains that exact phrase:

“mozart was born at a very young age”

RefDesk – http://www.refdesk.com/
RefDesk has been around for ages, and it’s still great. It contains over 20,000 links. When you visit the front page you may find yourself a bit overwhelmed. Have no fear; it’s simple. On the left you’ll see some search boxes for popular search tools (like Google) and links to site information and “Quick Find” for specific information types like jobs, economic facts, and obituaries. In the middle you’ll see daily features (x-of-the-day) as well as links to current event resources and, at the bottom of the page, RefDesk subject categories. Finally, on the right you’ll see lots of news links, “help and advice” links, and pointers to reference resources in popular categories like almanacs, biographies, etc.

ReferenceDesk – http://www.referencedesk.org/
ReferenceDesk is a lot less cluttered than RefDesk, but it doesn’t have all that cool stuff on the front page either! The front page is laid out more like a searchable subject index, with categories like Almanacs, Law and Legal, Quick Searches, and Biographies. On the left and right side of the category list, you’ll see a variety of link lists, including Quick Useful Links, Today in History, and even television listings.

LibrarySpot – http://www.libraryspot.com/
LibrarySpot is one of the Spot family of sites, and there’s plenty of good stuff here. This site is not so much about ready reference as it is about library-type information. Because of that, you’ll find some unusual features here, including asked questions, trivia, library listings, and a huge number of lists (top 100 movies, 2004 college rankings, etc.). Be sure to check out the pulldown menus at the top of the page, which will direct you to a number of reference tools as well as to library news, reference information, and more.

“When you need a variety of information at one time, or you’re not quite sure what you need, these all-in-one sites are great,” Calishain explains. “They point you to a ton of information at once, and for the most past they’re fast-loading and don’t clutter your surfing with pop-ups or a lot of unnecessary graphics.”

Most search engines use search term frequency as a primary way of determining whether a document is relevant. If you’re researching diabetes and the word “diabetes” appears multiple times in a Web document, it’s reasonable to assume that the document will contain useful information. Therefore, a document that repeats the word “diabetes” over and over is likely to turn up near the top of your list.

If your keyword is a common one, or if it has multiple other meanings, you could end up with a lot of irrelevant hits. And if your keyword is a subject about which you desire information, you don’t need to see it repeated over and over—it’s the information about that word that you’re interested in, not the word itself.

Some search engines consider both the frequency and the positioning of keywords to determine relevancy, reasoning that if the keywords appear early in the document, or in the headers, this increases the likelihood that the document is on target. For example, one method is to rank hits according to how many times your keywords appear and in which fields they appear (i.e., in headers, titles or plain text). Another method is to determine which documents are most frequently linked to other documents on the Web. The reasoning here is that if other folks consider certain pages important, you should, too.

If you use the advanced query form on AltaVista, you can assign relevance weights to your query terms before conducting a search. Although this takes some practice, it essentially allows you to have a stronger say in what results you will get back.

As far as the user is concerned, relevancy ranking is critical, and becomes more so as the sheer volume of information on the Web grows. Most of us don’t have the time to sift through scores of hits to determine which hyperlinks we should actually explore. The more clearly relevant the results are, the more we’re likely to value the search engine.

For more useful tips on improving search efficiency, visit The Spider’s Apprentice.