Why am I not finding what I want?

1. You may be looking in the wrong place
2. You may be asking the wrong question
3. You may not have told your search engine what a good answer would look like
4. You might need to know something to find out something more
5. You might have given up too soon
6. Your answers may be on the invisible web or not on the web at all
7. You might not know what to do with the information you did find
8. You might need help from an expert
9. You might have gone to the wrong place to ask the question. FIRST RULE OF INFORMATION: GO WHERE IT IS.*

General Search Tips

1. SECOND RULE OF INFORMATION: THE ANSWER YOU GET DEPENDS ON THE QUESTION YOU ASK. Move up and down the continuum from general to specific. Remember, AN answer is not the only possible answer.
   
   

2. Different kinds of questions require different strategies. The needle in the haystack problem may be viewed in many ways:

   A known needle in a known haystack
   A known needle in an unknown haystack
   An unknown needle in an unknown haystack
   Any needle in a haystack
   The sharpest needle in a haystack
   Most of the sharpest needles in a haystack
   All the needles in a haystack
   Affirmation of no needles in a haystack
   Things like needles in any haystack
   Let me know whenever a new needle shows up
   Where are the haystacks?
   Needles, haystacks -- whatever

   [from Matthew Koll. "Major Trends and Issues in the Information Industry." http://www.asidic.org/techsumf99.html]

3. Search style: start broad and start narrowing or highly precise search. There are advantages and drawbacks to each.

4. Use "wedge words" -- words that help you extract specific kinds of data:

   "financial ratios" + FAQ
   laser printers + features + comparison
   "Word 6.0" + tutorial
   Hispanics + demographics
   "rock music" + encyclopedia
   "used cars" + "book value"
   catholicism + expert or priest + aska science + announcements
   maps + "lesson plans"
   cataloging + listserv
   audio + "search engine"
   patents + database

5. Everything you find contains clues for finding more. When you have a known good search result use the "more like this" feature to identify similar resources

6. Use specialized search engines or directories or databases. If you need sites for children, use a good children's directory or search engine; if you know federal and state governments would have the info you want, use searchgov.com, etc.

Some Good General Search Engines

1. AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/ -- best for coverage of non-American web sites, translation feature, available family filter, full boolean searching in advanced search mode. Special searches: image, MP3/audio, video, directory, news. Advanced search options: full boolean, restrict by date, language, file type, domain, country, site collapse

2. All the Web (formerly known as FastSearch) http://www.alltheweb.com/ -- comprehensive and fast; greatly improved search capability; currently indexes 2.1 billion pages, competitive with Google; offers specialized searches for news, pictures, videos, MP3, ftp; displays a search tip to the right of your results; displays related topics to the right of your results; allows you to customize your preferences. Allows searchScirus as an option.

3. Ask Jeeves http://www.askjeeves.com/ -- tries to find pages that answer questions with your key words in them; if you don't like the answers, it suggests related searches and lets you see results from other search engines. Now includes buttons for news search, shopping search, browse by subject. Bottom of search results page gives you the search directory

4. Google http://www.google.com/ -- Comprehensive, fast. Ranks by link popularity. Has a "more like this" feature; specialized search tabs for News, Groups, Images; sophisticated advanced search capabilities; clickable definition available with every search; topic specific search pages, including Google Uncle Sam, catalog searches, phonebook search; filtering available; special search operators link: related: intitle: allintitle: inurl: allinurl: info: site: stocks: . You can filter results by language, file format, date modified, domain, safesearch. Downloadable toolbar does neat things.

5. HotBot http://hotbot.lycos.com/ -- advanced search offers control of every element of your search; Direct Hit shows you what most people chose when they searched that topic ("collaborative filtering"). Allows personalization. Annoying popups. Restricted searches for news, e-mail addresses, white and yellow pages, stock quotes, discussion groups

6. MSN Search http://search.msn.com/ -- clarifies ambiguous search terms with "Popular related Topics," suggests related searches. Results include a "broaden your search" feature. Advanced search allows you to choose word stemming, where to look for search terms, region, language, domain, document depth, file extension, AV features

7. SurfWax http://www.surfwax.com/ -- if you want to use a metasearch engine, use this one, with its site snap feature.

8. Vivisimo http://vivisimo.com/
   or this one, with its clustering feature.

9. Yahoo! search defaults now to a Google search of the web, but will still pull up categories if you tell it to search in Directory. Best use for Yahoo! is as a directory or for specialized searches (auctions, classified, careers, people search, yellow pages, chat, etc.)

Some Specialized Search Engines

1. Ask Jeeves for Kids http://www.ajkids.com/ -- a kid-friendly database of answers

2. Bartleby http://bartleby.com/

3. Ditto.com -- the leading visual search engine http://Ditto.com/

4. Kids Click http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/ -- good sites for kids

5. SciSeek Science Search Engine http://www.sciseek.com/

6. SearchBug: the Most Useful Searches http://www.searchbug.com/ -- has saved results of the most common searches, by topic

7. SearchEdu.com http://www.searchedu.com/ -- restricts itself to searching university web sites, along with links to related topics in the Open Directory

8. SearchGov.com http://searchgov.com/ -- searches federal, state, local and international government sites (or firstgov.gov/ or google.com/unclesam/ )

9. X-Refer http://w1.xrefer.com/ -- searches through more than 60 online dictionaries, encyclopedias and quote books

10. For lots more, see Guide to Specialized Search Engines http://www.searchability.com/ or either of the Invisible web sites below.

1. Most books, dissertations, conference proceedings
2. Most magazines, journals and newspapers from before 1995
3. Most public records from before 1995
4. Information you found online six months ago
5. Detailed local information: parish histories, transcripts of city council meetings, oral histories, etc.
6. Invisible web resources - not ON the net but THROUGH the net
7. knowledge inside people's heads and hard drives
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   See the Berkeley "How Much Information" Project for another take on this http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info/summary.html

1. THIRD RULE OF INFORMATION: SEARCHING IS A MULTI-STAGE PROCESS. Sometimes you want to use a general search engine or directory to find a specialized directory or database and then search inside that. As you pick up information in the course of your search, use it to alter or refine your search.

2. Direct Search http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm

3. The Invisible Web http://www.invisibleweb.com/ -- more sites that search engines can't get into

4. The Invisible Web -- companion site to the book by Chris Sherman and Gary Price http://www.invisible-web.net/

1. AskERIC http://askeric.org/Eric/ -- the primary abstract service for education articles (or search the smaller ERIC/AE full-text library for actual documents http://ericae.net/ftlib.htm)

2. Educational Listservs http://www.cln.org/lists/home.html

3. FindArticles.com http://www.findarticles.com/PI/index.jhtml -- indexes and links to magazine articles on the net

4. Google Groups search -- usenet discussions back to 1980.

5. Journalist's Toolbox: Public Records
   http://www.journaliststoolbox.com/newswriting/publicrecords.html
   A valuable set of links and strategies for locating public records, online or not.

6. How Stuff Works http://www.howstuffworks.com/

7. Legal Information Institute http://www.law.cornell.edu/

8. MagPortal http://magportal.com/ -- indexes and links to magazine articles on the net

9. Medline http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/medline.html -- primary abstracting source for medical literature.

10. Medline Plus http://medlineplus.gov/ -- a database for laypersons of excellent resources on medical conditions

11. Online Books Page http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ -- search over 17,000 full-text books

12. Statistical Resources on the Web http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/stats.html

13. X-Refer http://w1.xrefer.com/ -- searches through online dictionaries, encyclopedias and quote books

    Not finding one offhand? STRATEGY: when in doubt, add the term "database" to your search term in a general search engine, as in PATENTS + DATABASE

1. Research Buzz, from Tara Calishain http://researchbuzz.com/ -- updates available by e-mail.

2. Search Day http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/ -- a free daily e-mail newsletter from invisible web expert Chris Sherman.

3. Search Engine Showdown http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/ -- updates available by e-mail, from Greg Notess

4. Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/ -- updates available by e-mail, from Danny Sullivan

5. Web Search at About.com http://websearch.about.com/ -- also look here for a nice selection of topical portals and search engines, as well as search engine strategies

1. Library Weblogs http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html

2. Virtual Acquisition Shelf and News Desk http://resourceshelf.freepint.com/

In these sites, search engines allow you to see what people are searching for and how they are searching. It's also a good guide to what the hot new things are -- new toys, movies, TV shows, etc. A good way to test your searching prowess is to see if you can find some of the things these people are looking for.

1. Ask Jeeves Peek through the Keyhole http://www.askjeeves.com/docs/peek/

2. Lycos Top50 Daily Report http://50.lycos.com/

3. Savvy Search Snoop http://www.savvysearch.com/snoop
   
   
   

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*See "My Rules of Information." Searcher, January, 2002, 61-65, available online at http://infotoday.com/searcher/jan02/block.htm


TO TRY OUT SOME SEARCH PROBLEMS, GO TO http://marylaine.com/test.html