b>Search Engines

Those of us who work in the IT industry know that the key to success is knowledge. Knowledge of your chosen market, of your competitors, new software, new hardware and a million other things that you need to know.

Granted, it’s not an easy task. It often takes dedicated ‘geeks’ continually surfing the Net for the necessary information day in, day out, to filter through the masses of information overload that is commonplace on the Net today. But there are certain ‘methods’ that might make it a bit easier and more efficient.

Most users of the Internet are familiar with ‘Search Engines’ but few understand how they actually work and although it isn’t necessary to understand the actual algorithms used for individual engines it’s important to have an idea of the type and quality of the results that get shown.

The main types of engines are the generic search engines such as Google and All The Web, next are the Directories such as Yahoo and finally there are the Meta Search engines such as IXQuick and Metor. Although there are others such as PPC’s and Mete-meta search engines (All in one) I won’t list them all as it may confuse the issue.

These engines provide results in different ways and, if you can understand them, will enable you to find more information on any particular topic than would normally be available to you if you were to use only one or two engines.

Firstly, the generic search engines use an automated searching program (spider) to try and locate any site that matches the query that you entered into its search box. It then lists them according to its own idea of what it believes is the most relevant to you. The directories, however, have humans to sort out different sites into different sections and hopefully weed out sites that would not be appropriate to your request. These are a bit more limiting but often give quality information. Lastly we have the Meta search engines, these utilise the services of a multitude of different search engines to search simultaneously for sites that match your query. Again, they then sort out the sites according to what they believe might be the most relevant to you. The biggest use of these is to find leads for a subject you are not familiar with.

Ok, that’s the basics sorted out.

Advanced search tools

Many engines have advanced search features that use a mixture of Boolean search tools and restrictive results that can give a more precise return on your query. These normally include instructions such as:

‘AND’, ‘+’ or ‘Must include’: Blocks results that don’t have the keywords that were inputted within a site.

‘OR’ or ‘Should include’: Will allow sites with one or more of the keywords that were inputted.

‘NOT’, ‘-‘ or ‘Must not include’: Prevents sites containing keywords that have been specified by the user from being listed.

If a string of keywords are contained by “speech marks” these will be searched for as if they were a single word. E.g. “A hotel in Paris” would list primarily all the hotels in Paris whereas A hotel in Paris, without speech marks, would list a lot of hotels that might have nothing to do with Paris.

Searching methodology

Without some sort of plan, it will be easy to get lost among the myriad of web pages out there on the Web so it is important you keep track of:

1.What you are searching for. 2.Where you have been. 3.A list of URL’s (Uniform Resource Locator) you wish to follow up on.

Some of you might laugh, but it’s easy to get distracted and it’s important that, if you are searching for a specific piece of information, you do not get sidetracked.

Documentation

It is important, when you are collecting information, that you have an understanding of the Copyright Laws. This basically means when you are storing your information make sure you display who wrote it and the site that you got it from.

Information organisation

What do you do with all the information you collect? Lots of people just copy and paste onto poorly labelled documents into non-descript folders and then wonder why they can’t find it when the meeting is in ten minutes.

Labelling is important. One of the greatest mistakes I often see is when people insist in using some sort of code to define whatever contents they have e.g.: ‘foot86Engwcg’ = ‘1986 world cup, English football team, goalie’, I mean, what’s the point in using code. We don’t have any restrictions saying we have to use no more than a dozen letters, do we?

When creating a document, always save it with a name describing whatever the content is about. Save the document into a folder that has been clearly marked with whatever topic it is meant to hold.

That may seem long-winded but it becomes invaluable when your research begins to grow and you end up with over a thousand documents or book-marked sites. It will also improve your chances in finding any particular document in the future when using the search facility.