BARE BONES 101:

"Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind."
             --Marsten Bates, 1967

LESSON 6:    CREATING A SEARCH STRATEGY

STARTING OUT

It's always a good idea to THINK about your search before you begin. Create a search strategy in your head by asking yourself this question:

What do I want to do?

  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.

  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 mega-search engines, such as Ixquick, 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 Fast (All the Web) Search or Google, or to a specialized database such as Voice of the Shuttle (for humanities research) or the 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.

DEFAULTS, AND OTHER STUFF

In your search statement, if you enter more than one keyword without using any accompanying sign, mark or symbol (see Lesson 7 and Lesson 8 for explanations and examples), the search engine will automatically add either the AND or the OR conjunction to link your search terms together. This could radically alter your search in unexpected ways. Be sure you know the defaults (basic settings) of the search engine you are using, as this could explain why your search results may not be what you expected them to be.

Strange things can happen for other reasons as well. Sometimes the relevance ranking systems that search engines use (and which they are reluctant to reveal), can throw off your search by ignoring some of the words in your search statement. This might happen when the search engine recognizes your string of separate keywords as a phrase in its list of pre-determined phrases or when it is responding to its own internal list of "stop words" (see below). Whatever the case, you may never know the real reason why your search retrieves so many irrelevant responses.

STOP WORDS

Stop words are words that many search engines DON'T stop for when searching texts and titles on the web. In fact, in order to cut down on response time, these engines routinely ignore stop words, i.e., small and common words, such as parts of speech (adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, or forms of "to be"). Examples include: a, an, and, as, at, be, if, into, it, of, on, or, the, to, with, etc. Not all search engines recognize the same stop words. In addition, their lists can and do change frequently. If you initiate a search at a site that maintains a list of stop words and you type any of those words into your search statement (even in phrases surrounded by quotes), they will be ignored. The exception to this is the Google search engine, which has a stop word list but recognizes stop words within phrases surrounded by quotation marks, e.g., "to be or not to be" or "what you see is what you get".

CREATING A SEARCH STATEMENT

When structuring your query, keep the following tips in mind:
[NOTE: See Lesson 7 for an explanation of the signs and marks used below.]
  • Be specific
        EXAMPLE:    Dublin Core metadata

  • Whenever possible, use nouns and objects as keywords
        EXAMPLE:    Hurricane Hugo

  • 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:    vitamins drugs interaction

  • Combine keywords, whenever possible, into phrases
        EXAMPLE:    "search engine tutorial"

  • Avoid common words, e.g., green, unless they're part of a phrase
        EXAMPLE:    "green tea"

  • 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:    "college savings plans" "Section 529" +state +sponsored

ASSIGNMENT:

Select a search engine, and try searching the following keywords in this order:
  1. Woodstock
  2. Woodstock 1969
  3. Woodstock 1969 Grateful Dead


Evaluating Web Pages                           Search Tips

[Table of Contents] [Search Engines] [Metasearchers] [Subject Directories] [Gateways & Databases]
[Evaluating Web Pages] [Search Tips] [Boolean Operators] [Field Searching] [Troubleshooting] [All the Web (Fast)]
[Alta Vista] [Google] [Ixquick] [Yahoo!] [Final Exam] [Beyond Bones] [User Agreement]

Links and text checked regularly. Latest update on 10 July 2002.
This tutorial was first created in January 2000 by Ellen Chamberlain, library webweaver.
Copyright © the Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina.
URL: http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/lesson6.html