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The World Wide Web started back in in 1990 as a way for physicists to share information online. The basic concept was that each web "page" would contain information, as well as links to other pages of information. With the introduction of graphical browsers such as Mosaic and later Netscape, the Web has increased dramatically in size. The Web has changed much since then: it is much vaster, and much fuller with content. The most recent estimates place the number of web sites at close to 700,000 sites. Note that each web site, such as www.technet.nm.net, may have hundreds of pages. This means there are literally millions of web pages out there.
How do you find what you're looking for? The answer is search engines. There are two basic approaches: categories and keywords. They both retrieves something called a URL, or Uniform Resource Locator. (See the glossary for more on URLs.)
Most of the time, you can go to a new URL just by clicking on a link. Sometimes, when you want to type in a URL, you can simplify it by leaving the prefix off. If you typed www.technet.nm.net/menu/doc/search.htm into Netscape versions 3 or 4, it would add the http:// for you.
Most search engines use some kind of web forms. If you haven't used web forms before, see Using Web Forms for some hints on how to use them more efficiently.
Keep in mind that almost anyone can now get access to the Internet. If you're looking for solid information, check with more than one source. Pages at official sites are generally more trustworthy than individual home pages. Even if the site is official, it is still often useful to see when the page was last updated. Responsible web sites indicate when they were last updated. Although it depends on the kind of page you're viewing, it's often true that if the date is old, or there isn't a date at all, it's less reliable. Use your common sense: don't believe something just because you read it on the Web.
Sites like Yahoo! and Galaxy try to break the Internet down into categories to help manage the wealth of information.
When you're searching by category, first decide what kind of site you are looking for. Is it a business site, an educational site, a recreational site? Let's say you're looking for stuff on your favorite NFL team, the Albuquerque Conquistadors. Go to the Yahoo! main page Looking over the main page, the category you want is Recreation and Sports. Clicking on it brings you a large list of things, alphabetically. You pick Sports. Scrolling down the list, you see Football (American) and Football (Australian). You pick Football (American). Next, you pick National Football League. This offers you the choice of Teams. From there, you can pick the Albuquerque Conquistadors.
Or say need to know how far away the moon is. Again, go to the Yahoo main page. (Bookmark this page if you already haven't). Look at the categories. You pick Science. under science, Astronomy looks like what you want. You look around, and Solar System looks good. Next, you click on Moons, then Earth's Moon.
You try a couple links: one page lists statistics. Sure enough, it tells you the moon is, on average, 384,000 kilometers away from Earth.
Category based search engines:
A keyword search lets you enter a word or words to search for. These are usually words you expect will appear on a Web page. Keyword searches are especially good when you know exactly what you want. They're not so good if you don't know how to spell the words.
The big advantage search engines have is that they are run automatically, so their catalogs of the Web are very complete. If the topic you want information on is obscure, search engines are definitely the way to go.
A few caveats about search engines: occasionally, the page you get won't have any of the terms on it you looked for. This usually happens because the page has been changed and the search engine hasn't had time to return to that site to see the new content. Likewise, sometimes the page is no longer there at all.
Let's say you want a new screen saver for your computer.
Go to Alta Vista and type in the words screen saver and click Search. Notice you get a huge number of hits. Click into the same area and enter another word of an area that interests you. Let's say you've been pining for the slopes of Aspen. So (leaving the words screen saver there) you also type in skiing and click Search again. Notice that this time you get ten times fewer matches.
It's important to understand that in a basic search, the search engine shows you pages that match any of the words. It lists the pages with all three first, then with two of each, and finally those with one. This means that the first few pages are the most likely to have what you're looking for.
Some of the more advanced search engines will let you require that some words you type be in any document you see, or require that any word NOT be in any document that you see.
For example, say you're interested in business opportunities in Albuquerque, but want to avoid those questionable multi-level marketing schemes you've heard about.
In Alta Vista's main screen, type +Albuquerque +"business opportunities" -MLM -multi and click Search. The + mark means the words must appear, the - mark means the words must NOT appear. The quote marks around business opportunities tells the search engine to look for the phrase "business opportunities", not the words business and opportunities separately.
The ability to require words helps narrow searches greatly, because otherwise search engines will typically show you documents that contain any of the words you typed in.
In this example, a search on "business opportunities" alone would return over 120,000 page to look at. A search on Albuquerque and "business opportunities" returns over 30,000 responses. But the full search returns 500 documents, a much more reasonable number to sort through.
Sometimes you know a phrase of a song and want to know who sang it, or what the exact lyrics are. If you remember that phrase correctly, trying typing it in with quotes around it:
Example:
You and your friend have been arguing over the lyrics to Hotel California. Specifically, your friend thinks there's a line that goes "She's definitely twisted." You say the line is "She's Tiffany twisted." But you both agree that there's a line that goes "Some dance to remember, some dance to forget." To settle a bet, you can look it up:
In the Alta Vista search engine, type "Some dance to remember, some dance to forget". According to two different pages, the line is definitely "She's Tiffany twisted."
This kind of search is also extremely useful if you forgot to bookmark a good page. If you can remember one unique phrase that that page contained, you should be able to find it again fairly painlessly.
Keyword search sites:
If you're tired of looking through many sites only to find that there's one gem out there that hits the spot of exactly what you're looking for, you may want to consider using a site review web site. These are sites that rate other web sites, typically for things like content, presentation, and organization.
Site reviews typically work best for more common searches, because site reviews can't be automated. If you're looking for an obscure subject, a search engine is much more likely to have it.
Most site review sites give either stars (four stars generally being the highest) or numerical ratings on a scale of 0 to 100.
Site review services are organized like category searches, starting with broad categories and becoming more specific, except that poor sites are excluded. Sites are typically listed from the best down to the good.
Related Documentation:
Document URL -- http://www.technet.nm.net/menu/doc/search.htm
Last modified on June 15, 1998
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