Creating a Search Strategy

Now that you have an idea of what Web Pages are reliable and which ones are not, you need to create a plan. And obviously in order to do this, you must know what your purpose is. What are you looking for?

Do you want to:

1. Browse?
2. Locate a specific piece of information?
3. Retrieve everything I can on the subject?

Your answer will determine how you conduct your search and what tools you will use, and also, how you word your searches. 

1. If you're browsing and trying to determine what's available in your subject area, start out by selecting a subject directory like Yahoo! Then, enter your search keyword(s) into one of the metasearch engines, such as Vivisimo, just to see what's out there.
2. If you're looking for a specific piece of information, go to a major search engine such as Google, or to a specialized database such as Bureau of the Census (for statistics).
3. If you want to retrieve everything you can on a subject, try the same search on several search engines. Also, don't forget to check resources off the Web, such as books, newspapers, journals and other print reference sources.

Now here is the tricky stuff…

If you are not specific, these engines can add the words “and” or “or” to link your words together. For obvious reasons, this alters your results and you might not get what you are looking for. Sometimes the words can be ignored and the engine recognizes words separately and the results are irrelevant and ineffective. There is a list of words known as “stop” words and are usually cut out to cut down response time. These words can be “a, about, an, and, are, as, at, be, by, from, how, I, in, is, it, of, on, that, the, this, we, what, when, where, which, with, etc.” If for example the phrase you are looking for has to have one of these stop words, you might want to consider using “quotations” around them.

The following are effective search statements:

CREATING A SEARCH STATEMENT

• Be specific
      EXAMPLE:    Hurricane Hugo
   
• Whenever possible, use nouns and objects as keywords
      EXAMPLE:    fiesta dinnerware plates cups saucers
   
• Put most important terms first in your keyword list; to ensure that they will be searched, put a +sign in front of each one
      EXAMPLE:    +hybrid +electric +gas +vehicles
   
• Use at least three keywords in your query
      EXAMPLE:    interaction vitamins drugs
   
• Combine keywords, whenever possible, into phrases
      EXAMPLE:    "search engine tutorial"
   
• Avoid common words, e.g., water, unless they're part of a phrase
      EXAMPLE:    "bottled water"
   
• Think about words you'd expect to find in the body of the page, and use them as keywords
      EXAMPLE:    anorexia bulimia eating disorder
   
• Write down your search statement and revise it before you type it into a search engine query box
      EXAMPLE:   +"south carolina" +"financial aid" +applications  +grants