This Masterclass tutorial will help you sift through the wealth of information that
is available on the Internet and get to the heart of what you really want to know.
If you are already a regular Internet user then you have probably noticed that a
large amount of the information is from America and may therefore be useless. If you
are searching for a service or company you will not want American services, you want
local or at least British companies. One of the best ways to prevent this happening
is to use directory search options. A directory is like a tree, as you search you go
down a particular branch and as you search further and further the branches you follow
lead on to further branches, all of which are related. There are a variety of directory
search engines for the UK such as http://www.scoot.co.uk, which we used.
Load your Internet browser from the desktop Type in the URL of the search engine you
wish to use, i.e. http://www.ukplus.co.uk
With these you can type in a general word that relates to the subject you wish to
research. For example we were looking for a dog breeder and typed into Scoot 'pets',
this then gave us a list of related areas on the Scoot directory.
Although as we found, you may be given some links, which are totally unrelated, for
example our pets search brought up Allied Carpets.
When the directory has loaded, key in the subject you want to research Click on
the 'Search' button.Another way to use the directories is to use the directory areas
already listed. In UK Plus we went straight to their Lifestyle and Interests section.
With a directory loaded such as: http://www.yahoo.co.uk Click on a directory area that
is related to your subject, i.e. Lifestyle and Interests
By clicking through these directories you are drilling deeper and deeper into the
database and you will get nearer and nearer what you are looking for.
Toppers' tips: Use 'Directories' for broad searches
Part 2 Widening the search
When you are searching make sure you use sites that are specific for the UK, there are
lots about and you will save yourself a lot of time if you make sure that you are
using Excite or Yahoo .co uk rather than .com.
Excite is a good search engine to use as it gives you a list of replicated Websites.
Key in the URL for Excite: http://www.excite.co.uk
As you view the list you will see 'URL' and an address below each category, to ensure
that you do not look a hundred different sites and keep returning to the same page,
Excite has a 'List by Web Sites' option, this groups all the pages listed.
To really make your search specific, use a Boolen search, so named after the
mathematician George Boole who worked out sub sets for finding mathematic solutions.
A similar method can be used for Web searching. By adding speech marks, a plus sign
before keywords, a minus symbol and the word 'or' will make sure that you only get
information related to your keywords.
Toppers' tip: Use 'Engines' for keyword searches
Part 3 Advanced Search engines
When you are using the Boolen tools on a search engine like Alta Vista you will find
that your reply will have thousands of sites on it. It will not be practical for you
to trawl through all of these, and many will not feature information you want. Thus
you will need to narrow your search down as much as possible. One way of avoiding
this is to keep adding classifications to your search to narrow it down. With our
search for a dog breeder we added Terrier to our search.
Go to the Alta Vista search engine at: http://www.altavista.com/ Type in the basic
area for your search, we typed in +Dog+Breeders Click on 'Search' When the results come
up, narrow your search by adding +Terriers As you search, especially if you are using
a search engine like Alta Vista you will notice that a lot of the sites are
American. There is a really fast way of using engines like Alta Vista and making sure
you only get British material. At the beginning of your search categories type
in: 'domain:uk' The search engine will now know that you only want sites from the UK.
Search engines such as Yahoo and Alta Vista only search about 18 to 20 per cent of the
World Wide Web. If you are looking for some information that is
very specialised, you may want to search the search engines. There are two services
that do this, http://www.dogpile.com, which lists how many sites on each search engine
and links to them for you. There is also http://www.askjeeves.com/, which asks you to
ask questions and based on these it will narrow your search down for you.
