PRINCE OF WALES LIBRARY: SEARCH ENGINE HELP

Before you begin your research you should consider your options.

What are the best resource choices?
Print or online?
Consider the Digital Library - subscription databases.
Are there database resources that the school or public library subscribe to that will give you the best, most relevant information?
Are there resources available on portals - the PW library web site, VPL, or other education sites - with annotated links on your topic? (Portals provide links that have been evaluated for accuracy, relevance, currency, bias, and readability.)
You should never rely on one search engine. A new site that has yet to be discovered will not appear near the top of a Google list.

When you know how each search engine functions, you will be able to achieve better search results. Always keep your purpose in mind and read annotations carefully.

Use the advanced search function to refine your searches and learn about how the search engine works.
Look at the Help supplied by the search engine.
To find out more about how search engines and directories work visit FINDSPOT.
Search Engine Watch is another useful tool for unravelling the mysteries of search engines. This site reviews search engines and also provides information on how they work.
Below you will find some of the basics. As search engines are upgraded, it is important to check the search help to see if the rules have changed.

Clustering Search Engines and More About Google

Teoma is the grown up version of Ask Jeeves. The benerfit of this search engine is that it gives you a list of relevent results as well as suggestions for refining your search. Teoma also list metasites that contain list of links for your topic.
The Google site has many parts and a number of unique strategies worth knowing about.
- You may choose to search in the regular Google search engine or you can search in the Google Directory which is organized by subject.
- This site is unique in that it rates sites by how many external sites link to them. This means that popular sites will come to the top of the list.
- Advanced Search provides a step-by-step search process.
- Google offers many Alternate Query Strategies which will help you to refine your searches.
- Are You Feeling Lucky? If you are going to a specific site and you think that it might be at the top of Google's list, click on "I'm Feeling Lucky" to go directly to the site. Try it for "Prince of Wales Library".
- Synonyms - the ~ symbol directly before a word will search for synonyms. See the information below.

Use the ~ (tilda) in Google to capture synonyms. Use the tilda when you think that what you are looking for may be found under several terms or when you are not sure of your term.
- ~hotels - will find hotels, motels, bed and breakfast
- ~UFOs - will find related terms - aliens
- ~WWI - will find World War I, The Great War
The same result can be acheived using OR
- e.g. hotel OR motel OR "bed and breakfast"

Alta Vista: pollution and air and not water
- pollution +air -water
- "air pollution" or "water pollution"
- "air pollution" and not "water pollution"
- boating near safety (words appear within 100 words)
Excite: pollution AND air AND NOT water
- pollution +air -water
- pollution AND (air OR water)
Google: pollution air -water
- "air pollution" -"water pollution"
- No option for OR
Webcrawler: pollution AND air NOT water
- "air pollution" or "water pollution"
- air ADJ Jordan (terms will appear next to each other)
- boating NEAR/25 safety (within 25 words)
- Homer NOT (Simpson OR Alaska)
- Yahoo: +pollution +air -water

Truncation: (quilt* finds quilt, quilts, quilting etc.)
Variant Spelling: (colour* finds colour or color)
- Alta Vista: Truncation and variant spelling - will ignore searches with too many hits
- Google: No truncation. (stemming)
- Yahoo: Truncation only
Capitalization:
- Some Engines are Case Sensitive. However, lower case will find upper case.
  - canada or Canada will find Canada and CANADA
  - CANADA will only find CANADA