Before you start a search, it is important to have a general understanding of the basic strategies for searching on the internet. Read this to get a clearer picture of effective search techniques! Make sure to also check out search engine tips and activity for elementary students.

Search Tool Differences

1. Before you start, try to understand the difference between a subject directory guide, search engine and a meta search engine.

• Subject Directory Guide: These sites are hierarchically organized into deep indexes of subjects and categories. They are presearched and preselected by human beings and loaded into their giant database of information. Therefore, web sources are more reliable and current, because they have been "preselected". Keep in mind that because they are maintained by people, there is a less of a chance of getting results that don't match your keyword terms.
• Search Engine: No human beings are involved in this search. This is all done automatically by "spiders" and "robots" which are programs that crawl through the internet to retrieve your information. Keywords are used that run against a database so even though search engines perform similar tasks, they all go about it in a different way. So if you need specific information rather than general information about your topic, then a search engine is a good place to start!
• Meta Search Engine: These tools "search" the search engines and allow you to access many databases at the same time. Meta search engines are fast and can easily allow the internet user to sort through or modify results to achieve better success. They usually give a wide variety of results, too.

2. Find a search tool whose appearance appeals to you.

• Once you understand the difference between search tools, know that all search tools have different interfaces, ease of use, font sizes and styles, color schemes, etc. Find a tool that works best for your learning style and stick with it until you get to know it a bit better.

3. Once you find a search tool you like, spend some time on it and use it for a variety of searches.

• Get to know the search tool you have chosen by exploring the online help menu. Here you will find specific search strategies that work best for that tool. You will be amazed at what the help menu can offer!

4. Be specific with your keywords.

• Most search tools understand plain English and can be easy to use if you are specific with your keywords. Tell the search tool exactly what you are looking for, in the same manner that you might ask a reference librarian. The more descriptive you can be, the better! Try a variety of key word combinations and see how your results change!

5. Bookmark your favorite sites!

• Once you identify a site that you would like to keep as a reference, save it. Netscape Navigator has a "Bookmark" option on the menu bar. Click on bookmark and a menu will appear. Click on add bookmark and your website is saved for future use. The next step is to organize those bookmarks into folders so that you can easily refer to them without having to do a complete search again or know the URL address.

Search results are usually listed in relevant order based on your keywords. If you get a list of web sites that seem irrelevant to your topic, then your keywords are probably too broad. There are times when Netscape will not allow access to a particular site and an error message will appear. For example:

• Access to this Site Denied: The Marin County Office of Education, who provides us with server access, has a proxy server in place on the server. This applies a filter to sites that contain inappropriate content.
• DNS Lookup Failed: The browser, Netscape, could not find the specific web site address (URL) or the Web site is no longer active. It is important to check how you typed in the URL because it is case and character sensitive.
• File Not Found: The web site no longer exists on that server or it did not leave a forwarding address if it moved.
• Server Error or Server Busy Error, Try Again Later: The server you are trying to access with that web site stored on it may be busy. This is because a lot of people are trying to access it at the same time or perhaps the machine itself may not be turned on.

Try these strategies to improve the results of a particular search.

• Try an alternative spelling of your keyword. (e.g. email; E-mail)
• Add greater descriptive words to your keyword phrase or experiment with different combinations of words.
• Enclose phrases in double quotations. (e.g. "African elephant")
• Use commas to show a person's title and always capitalize names. (e.g. President, Bill Clinton)
• Use a plus sign in the same way that you might use quotation marks. (e.g. art +school +San Francisco)
• Use a minus sign to indicate a smaller search. (e.g. cats -kittens)
• When you don't know the exact spelling of a word, use a dollar sign to denote a word fragment. You will get a lot of irrelevant hits but you should get at least one appropriate site to see the spelling. (e.g. yugo$ for Yugoslavia)