Search Engines: Your Search is Only as Good as your Keywords

Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, Dogpile, etc) are the most common way of finding content on the World Wide Web (www). These search engines can be a great tool, or they can be very frustrating.

Learning to use them efficiently is a must for anyone who wants to dig for the truth.

Here is a partial list of search engines. Try several. You will find they all operate a little differently and some retrieve results that others don’t. Wikipedia has a discussion of how search engines work and how they rank their results here.

A excellent online tutorial on searching the web is offered by the UC Berkeley. Each search engine operates some what differently so be sure to read the help files for maximum effectiveness.

A few general tips:

Think about what you are searching for.

Google is probably the most popular seach engine but its results are based on your request. If I simply type in RON PAUL (case has no effect on searches) I got 50,700,000 results, but if I typed in “Ron Paul” (the name in quotes) I get 5,350,000 results.

At the bottom of the page Google give you a further option to Search Within Results. This can reduce the results to an even more manageable result. Often you will start to see patterns in your searches, and you will find additional keywords to add or subtract to refine your search.

Order is important.

Again using Google as an example, if I enter chinese, immigration, I get 18,200,000 results. If I enter immigration, china, I get 49,100,000 results. Try this yourself, and you will also notice some major difference in the rankings of the pages. So, when doing a deep search, vary the order of your search terms.

Boolean searches.

Sometimes the terms you are using have two different meanings. This will result in a lot of wasted time. You can adjust your search terms with a + or – sign. An example of this is searching for Hillary. Google will return all entries for hillary, i.e. Clinton, Sir Edmond, Duff (yes I know her name is spelled different but it is the nature of the search algorithm), Swank.

Google presumes a + or and; some search engines don’t. Try the same search as Hillary –Clinton. This eliminates all references to Hillary Clinton (don’t you wish it were really this simple in real life) in your search. Now try this search: spock, –”star trek” “ron paul”. This search produces some interesting reading once you get the comparison. (Dr. Benjamin Spock later acknowledged his mistakes.)

Each search engine offers what they refer to as an advanced search but if you learn to use quotes, the plus and minus signs you can save yourself some time. Advanced search features can come in handy to filter out non-English sites.

There is an old computer acronym that applies to all searches GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out. Your search is only as good as your keywords. Some search engines only rely on keywords input from webmasters; some, like Google, use bots to search the web for keywords.

You have to determine, and in some cases guess, how information would be indexed. An example would be a search for how many people are in the US Military. This could be indexed as strength, manpower, or population, but the US Department of Defense lists it as Personnel Statistics. You should try this search yourself to see the various responses.

A search engine is a tool, and like any tool it is only as good as the person using it. Practice and become familiar with the various search engines. Also, remember not all information on the web is accurate, so attempt to verify all your information, and remember to think about not only what is said but also what is NOT said. Learn to filter information and read between the lines.