How to Get the Best Out of Your Internet Search Experience

What on earth are search engines? Why do I have to take on them to find what I am looking for?

A search engine is a program that searches for sites based on the words that you use as your search terms. Search engines look through their own databases of information in order to find what you are looking for.

Search engines automatically create web site listings by using spiders that "crawl" web pages. Another program, called an indexer, reads these web pages and creates an index of their information, and optimally follows that site's links to other pages. Spiders return to already-crawled sites on a regular basis in order to check for updates or changes, and everything that these spiders find goes into the search engine database.

Simply put, search engines are tools you would use to begin your search for any information on the web. And no, you can't live without them.

With literally trillions of pages of information online, without effective search engines, finding anything on the Internet would be almost impossible. Different search engines work in different specific ways, but they all utilize the same basic principles.

Basically, internet search is done in three steps:

1. The web searcher types a word or set of words as search terms into a search engine.
2. Search engine quickly goes through literally millions, or even billions, of pages in its database to find matches to this query.
3. The search engine's results are then ranked and displayed in order of relevancy.

You might think search engines start to work only when you hit the search button. No, it doesn't work that way. Search engines are working behind the scenes even before you can think of using them.

The first thing search engines do is make a local database of the Internet. They index all of this information so that they can run searches on it efficiently, rather than having to run around the Internet every time a search query is sent.

Search engines create these databases by performing periodic crawls of the internet. Robots or spiders flit from page to page, recording all of the data on the page, and following every link to new pages. Different search engines refresh their indexes at different intervals, depending on how many spiders they constantly have crawling, and how fast those spiders crawl, with some working their way through the internet every day or two, and others only doing a periodic refresh every week or month.

As the spider goes through these pages, it keeps track of every word on the page, and record that page as relevant for searches with what the searcher use.

Now you know how search engines are able to return results of thousands of pages in just a matter of split seconds after you hit the search button.

The following tips will help you develop a few search habits that can make you a more effective searcher. Actually, searching the Web is a snap if you know what you're doing.

First, use targeted phrases in your search terms. The more specific your query is, the more success you're likely to get.

Second, do not use only one search engine for everything. It's okay to use one search engine for the majority of your Web search questions - you get to know that search engine better and can use it more successfully over the long run. However, there are a lot of good search engines out there so don't limit yourself to using just one. Get to know a few new search engines and your searches will not only be more interesting, but more effective as you learn which searches work best in which search engines.

Lastly, learn a few web search tricks that can make your life a lot easier. You don't have to learn any programming at all - just a few simple Web search tricks that can help you search better. We'll talk about more of this below.

Though search engines are fantastic, they often give too much information than what searchers are actually looking for. They are so good that a simple one-word search would display 20,000 pages! Getting the desired information is more like looking for a needle buried deep in a haystack. More often than not, attempts to pare down the search term used won't give interesting results either.

If you're an average researcher who needs ideas on how to use the power of search engines to your best advantage, you've come to the right place. This guide will give you tips and techniques on how to search for better result.

To illustrate, let's do a search at Find.com, my other favorite search engine.

Exact Phrase

· Open Find.com in your browser.
· Type "real estate lawyer" in the search box, then click Find. Alternatively, you can press Enter on your keyboard. Enclose the phrase in double quotes. This will tell the search engine to look for the pages that matches the exact phrase.

Find.com will search for the phrase found inside the quotes and will display all pages that contains the exact phrase real estate lawyer in the site's title or description.

Synonyms

If your search terms have synonyms, you might also want them to include in your search results. You can do that by putting the tilde character (~) before the search term.

Typing ~mobile phone in the search box will return sites that talks about or contains 'mobile phone', 'cellular phone', 'cell phone' in their pages.

Excluded Words

Say for example you want to search for 'bass' the musical instrument. Typing in 'bass' in the search box would give web pages that contains the word 'bass' on it.

If you want to filter your search results so that sites related to fishing won't be displayed, use the (-) operator. This will exclude all sites related to bass fishing.

Multiple Words

The OR operator will return web sites that contain multiple words in your search term. For example, typing 'hotels las vegas or new york' in the search box will show pages with the word 'hotels' and either 'las vegas' or 'new york'.

If you will incorporate these simple, basic tips in your searches, you'll be a much better and informed searcher than most Web users. Your searches will be more specific you don't have to waste time looking for irrelevant information deep in the results pages.

Looking for a certain type of information on the Internet is much easier if you know how and where to look for them.

...you looking for a job?

You can search for jobs online using jobs search engines like Monster.com and Indeed.com. These search engines offer features like searching for jobs through keywords, location, and job category, online resume posting, and job advice and resources. Social networking site LinkedIn also allows members to search for jobs and network with like-minded individuals to deepen their job search.

...you are looking for your favorite song's lyrics?

Searching for song lyrics are much easier with lyric search engines such as Get Lyrics, Lyrics Robot and My Lyrics Finder, to name a few. These lyrics search engines have sizeable database of song lyrics that you can browse by artist name, song title, and song category.

...you are looking for a good video to watch at home?

There are a number of video search engines and video directory like AlltheWeb and The Open Video Project that you can use. You can also search for videos online using Yahoo Video Search and Google Video Search. Internet Movie Database also offers movie and tv shows online. Just type the subject in the search box, and presto, you'll be given a list of related videos to watch or even download for free.

...you want to buy a car, a computer, a book, an engagement ring, a cell phone, or even a new home?

Shopping online is a breeze with shopping search engines like Google Product Search, Shopzilla, Yahoo Shopping, and shopping sites like Ebay and Amazon. These are just a few of the shopping search engines and shopping sites available today. They offer convenient and safe online shopping experience to the users.

...you need to locate an old friend from high school or college?

Find people online with free people search sites like Yahoo Free People Search. Reconnecting with lost friends and family won't be much of a problem.

There you have it! Finding information on the Internet is just a snap. You just need to know how and where to look for it.

Typical search engines crawl and index the many, many pages of the Internet - and we are talking about billions, if not trillions, of pages. If you search using one or two search terms like what most web searchers do, you will get quite a number of page results. Most of these results are not the ones you are really looking for. It is not unusual that the search engine will treat your search terms differently than what you intend it to be.

This is where specialty search engines come in handy. Specialty search engines are more focused on a specific subject or topic thus they will give you more relevant results. In the above example, someone who wants to travel can easily look for flights by using a travel search engine.

Specialty search engines are also known as topical search engines, vertical search engines or vortals. They focus on a specific topic like business, law, or medical research, a geographic location, a target audience, or a specific file format like pdf files. Unlike general search engines, they search from only a few specific sites thus they often offer greater depth of coverage for a category that makes results narrower and more relevant.

Some of them also operate like content directories where a human editor who is an expert in the subject reviews submitted sites before they got listed. This will make the results of higher quality and more reliable than what you can get from general search engines.

They can also help find the invisible web. Invisible web refers to the vast repository of information like databases that search engines and directories cannot retrieve. The contents of most of these databases require direct interaction from them. Since spiders cannot think and type the required fields in these databases, information cannot be retrieved. Not everything on the Web is visible because of technical barriers of search engine crawlers and the site owner's deliberate choice of excluding his web pages from the search engines. The invisible web offers a gold mine of information that you may not want to miss.