How to Find Information on the Web

Content

1. Introduction

2. By Subject Classification (or Directories)

3. By Keyword/Key Phrase

1. Searching Hints

2. Lists of Search Engines

3. Search Engines that Accept English

1. What Can Be Searched

2. Five Examples

4. Search Engines that Accept Chinese

1. Other Search Engines that Accept Chinese

5. Meta Search Engines: One Search By Numerous Search Engines At One Time

4. By Natural English Language

5. Subject-Specialized Search Engines

6. References

Introduction

Free Internet resources are scattered, diffused and dispersed, but sometimes may be very useful. These information and resources can be found by search engines on the World Wide Web.

This document is not a study on or comparison of various search engines on the World Wide Web. Rather, it highlights how relevant information and resources can be found by using them. Several search engines are used as examples to illustrates the searches.

While different search engines have different search capabilities, each search engine has its search guide available on its website. The search guide can be accessed by clicking on the hyperlink "Help", "Search Tips", "Tips", etc. Those who want to know more may go to the search guide.

By Subject Classification (or Directories)

Search engines listed here group Internet resources into broad subject categories. Desired information could be found by following the appropriate category.

1. Excite

Internet resources are grouped into over ten broad subject categories, each of which has sub-categories.

2. WWW Virtual Library

List out more than ten broad subject categories, each of which has sub-categories. Sub-categories point to webpages which in turn collect webpages with resources of the topics concerned.

3. Yahoo

Internet resources are grouped into more than ten broad subject categories, each of which has sub-categories.

4. 中文雅虎

Provide similar subject categories to that of Yahoo. Resources collected are primarily on China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, though some are on United States. Resources are basically in Chinese.

By Keyword/Key Phrase

Two Search Approaches

1. Input as many relevant keywords as possible, view only the first few pages of the result list.

   The reasoning behind is search engines will return webpages that match all or some or one of the keywords inputted. The webpages with the most keywords would be listed first. The more keywords inputted, the more refined the search results that appear top of the result list would be. Those appear lower or at the bottom of the result list would be irrelevant, and may be ignored.

2. Get a small, highly relevant result set by

   1. using phrase searching

   2. specifying word/phrase that must be present or must be absent

   3. using searching tag

Lists of Search Engines

1. Search Engines by Countries and Regions

   1. Search Engines Worldwide

2. Search Engines in Alphabetical Order

While search engines may cover Internet resources of any kind, some of the search engines in these two lists only cover resources of particular topics.

1. From AltaVista

2. From Yahoo

3. From Search Engine Watch

Search Engines that Accept English

1. What Can Be Searched

   1. title of the webpage

   2. text in the webpage

   3. the url address of the webpage

   4. host url of the webpage

   5. the text in the hyperlink

   6. the url address behind the hyperlink

   7. domain of the webpage (domain is the last part of the host url of the webpage)

   8. the name of the java applet

   9. the name of the image

2. Five Examples

Search engines that accept English may not support all of the above searches. Some support more, some support fewer. Of the five examples here, only AltaVista exhibits all the above searching capabilities.

1. AltaVista

1. Indexes the full text in all files in its database

2. Truncation * allows searcher to stem search terms, e.g. quot*, colo*r

3. In simple search, + immediately before a word or phrase requires it to be present, - used in simple search, immediately before a word or phrase excludes documents with its presence

4. Search phrases by quotation marks, e.g. "handover ceremony"

5. Search domain, e.g. domain:de, domain:org

6. Search host, e.g. host:altavista.digital.com

7. Search title, e.g. title:"handover ceremony"

8. Search url, e.g. url:nobel to find all pages on all servers that have the world nobel in the host name, path or filename

9. Search applet, e.g. applet:comet to find pages using applets called comet.

10. Search image, e.g. image:"jackie chan" to find pages with the filename of the image being "jackie chan".

11. Search pages that contain the specified text in any part of the page other than an image tag, link, or URL, e.g. text:comet

12. Search in the text of hyperlinks, e.g. anchor:"handover ceremony"

13. Search pages with a link to a page with the specified url text, e.g. link:www.cuhk.edu.hk to find all pages linking to CUHK homepage

14. Find websites or webpages similar to the specified url, e.g. like:www.patents.com will retrieve websites relating to patents

15. In advance search, four operators: AND, OR, NOT, NEAR (find documents containing both specified words or phrases within 10 words of each other)

2. Northern Light

1. Indexes the full text of all files in the database

2. Search phrases by quotation marks, e.g. "nobel prize"

3. Search pages that contain the specified text within the text of the document or website e.g. text:comet

4. Search title, e.g. title:"handover ceremony" to find pages of which the title has the phrase "handover ceremony"

5. Search url, e.g. url:nobel to find all pages on all servers that have the word "nobel" in the host name, path or filename

6. Truncation * allows searcher to replace multiple characters e.g. chemi* will find pages containing "chemical", "chemistry", etc.; or "psych*ist" will find pages containing "psychologist", "psychiatrist", etc.

7. Truncation % allows searcher to replace single character e.g. gene%logy will find pages containing "genealogy" and "geneology"

8. + immediately before a word or phrase requires it to be present, - immediately before a word or phrase excludes documents with its presence

9. supports full Boolean capability (AND, OR, NOT), including parenthetical expressions

3. Google
   1. Returns web pages that contain all the keywords entered but ignores common words and characters
   2. + to specify a keyword that must be present, - to exclude a keyword
   3. Put quotation marks around a phrase to do phrase searching
   4. No truncation search
   5. Supports OR operator
   6. site: to restrict the search to a particular website, e.g. "business administration" site:www.cuhk.edu.hk
   7. link: to find webpages with hyperlinks pointing to the specified URL, but a link: search cannot be combined with a regular keyword search, e.g. link:hkinchip.lib.cuhk.edu.hk

4. Excite

1. Indexes the full text of all files in the database

2. Search phrases by quotation marks, e.g. "nobel prize"

3. + immediately before a word or phrase requires it to be present, - immediately before a word or phrase excludes documents with its presence

4. Search title in Power Search

5. Three operators must be capitalized: AND, OR, AND NOT, e.g. "nobel prize" AND NOT peace

6. Those between parentheses are performed first

5. Yahoo

1. Automatic right truncation

2. Search phrases by quotation marks, e.g. "handover ceremony"

3. Search in the document title, e.g. t:"handover ceremony"

4. Search in the document url, e.g. u:cuhk.edu.hk

5. + immediately before a word or phrase requires it to be present, - immediately before a word or phrase excludes documents with its presence

Search Engines that Accept Chinese

1. GAIS (Global Area Information Servers)
   1. Accepts traditional Chinese character (Big5) only
   2. & to stand for AND, | stand for OR, ! stand for NOT
      e.g. 香港 & 公務員 & ( 薪酬 | 薪金)
   3. + to specify the phrase that must be present, -" to specify the phrase that must not be present
      e.g. +茶道 -日本

2. Other Search Engines that Accept Chinese

   1. 中文雅虎
      Accepts traditional (Big5) and simplified (GB) Chinese character

   2. 搜孤
      Accepts simplified (GB) Chinese character

   3. AltaVista in Chinese
      Can select to accept either traditional (Big5) or simplified (GB) Chinese character

   4. TOM 站
      Can select Hong Kong, Beijing or Shanghai, and Guangzhou stations that accept traditional (Big5) or simplified (GB) Chinese character

      1. phrase searching, but a long phrase might be broken down to short phrases
      2. A space to stand for "AND", e.g. 程式設計 薪金 上海 to find webpages talking about the salary of programmer in Shanghai
      3. | to stand for OR, - to stand for NOT
      4. . to limit the search to a specific website, e.g. 網上出版 .www.tsinghua.edu.cn
      5. link: to find webpages that have hyperlinks point to the specified website, e,g. link:www.lib.cuhk.edu.hk

Meta Search Engines: One Search By Numerous Search Engines at One Time

Meta search engines send the keyword/key phrase input to a number of search engines, and return a compilation of results from each of them to the user.

Meta Search Engines

By Natural English Language

Some search engines accept natural English language. Users do not need to know any searching techniques, but simply enter the kind of English spoken or written in daily life when searching Internet resources via this kind of search engines. However, the search may be less accurate.

1. WebCrawler

e.g. Who are the nobel prize laureates in 2000 ?

2. Ask Jeeves

e.g. How the toilet flushes

Subject-Specialized Search Engines

1. All Academic : The Guide to Free Academic Resources On-Line

All Academic is an all-discipline academic index to free publications on the Internet. It hosts or provides links to academic e-journals, working papers, convention proceedings, as well as other scholarly works. It supports searching by subject, author, journal or article title; and allows browsing by journal titles and convention proceedings.

2. Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library

EEVL, or Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library, searches the full text of over one hundred engineering e-journals, which are listed in the EEVL catalogue of engineering resources. In order to be selected, e-journals must be free, full text (or offer most of their content as full text) and available without registration.

3. Arts & Humanities

4. Business

5. Education
6. Government & Politics
7. Health & Medicine
8. Legal
9. Music
10. Science & Technology
    • Scirus : An index to science, medicine, technology, as well as economics, business and management information
11. Software & Computer