ITI E-Commerce
BackSurfing 101
Lesson 4
Searching the net
SEARCH with Explorer
Other Search Engines
Yahoo
How to Write a Good Search
An Incomplete List of Search Engines
Favorites and bookmarks
Surfing 101
In previous lessons, we focused on the Link as the main way to travel from place to place on the web. Links will always be an important way for you to navigate from place to place, but they aren’t always the best choice. In this lesson, we will talk about different navigation tools to move around the World Wide Web.
The quickest way to get to a web page is to type the address directly into your browser's address box. The address box is located at near the top of your browser. It shows the address of the web page you are currently viewing. If you know the address of where you want to go, you can type over the current address and the browser will connect you to the new site.
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What's a URL? Spell it out; don't say, "Earl." URL stands for Universal Resource Locator. It's computerese meaning "web address." Feel free to use either term. |
HOW TO DO IT
- Click once anywhere in the address box. This will highlight the entire line in blue.
- Start typing the new web address. If the old address was highlighted, it will disappear and the only thing you'll see is what you are typing. If the old address didn’t disappear, you will need to delete it using BACKSPACE and DELETE keys on your keyboard before moving on to the next step.
- Type the entire address and then hit the RETURN key. The new page will load.
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Shortcuts to Typing Addresses Do I Have to Type http://? No. Most web addresses begin with these letters. Your browser is smart enough to know this, so it automatically assumes that you meant to type these letters. What About www? Do I Have to Type That? Most of the time. Many web sites will automatically fill this information in for you. But not always. You can try typing in an address without the www. If it doesn't work, try typing it again, this time with the www. Can I Leave Off the .com? Usually. Not all addresses end in .com. Your browser will try all of the possible endings while trying to connect to a site. This won't always give you the results you're looking for. But if you want to try some shortcuts, this will work often enough to make it worthwhile. When I Start Typing in Netscape, The Browser Types For Me. Netscape will try to guess the address that you are typing based on sites that you have visited in the past. If Netscape guesses correctly, you can stop typing and hit the ENTER key. If not, keep typing the entire address. When I start Typing in Explorer, a Box Drops Down. This is Explorer's way of trying to guess what you are going to type. The box will list sites that match what you've typed so far. If you see the site that you want to visit, position the pointer over the site and click. If not, keep typing the entire address.
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Typing in a web address is great if you know the name of the site. Sometimes, it's worth typing in a guess, especially if you are looking for a very big company or organization. For example, IBM.com is going to take you right where you would expect it to. As we've gone through these lessons, you probably noticed that most of the web addresses made perfectly good sense. Taking a guess is a good way to start searching for something on the web. It's not foolproof, though. Fortunately, there are other ways to search for web sites.
A search engine is a web site that looks for other sites over the entire World Wide Web. . In most searches, you type in a few keywords that relate to your topic. The search engine will come up with some web sites that are likely to have the information that you want. There are different types of search engines for different tastes, and I will tell you about two of them in a few sections below. For now, you can start by hitting the SEARCH button on your browser. The search engine that appears depends on your browser and, possibly, your ISP.
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Explorer |
Netscape |
When you press SEARCH in Explorer, your browser will split into two sections called frames. In the left frame, you'll see information on your search. In the right frame, you will continue to see the current web page. One of the nice things about this arrangement is that you can keep track of your original search in the left frame while you investigate different pages in the right frame.
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HOW to do it
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Can I Adjust The Size Of The Frames? Yes. You can make your frames wider or narrower. Remember when you changed the size of windows in lesson 2? The steps here are very similar. How to do it
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You don't have to use the SEARCH button on your browser in order to search on the web. It may be convenient for you to use, but it might be limiting your choices. Not every search engine looks good in a small frame. As with so many aspects of computers and the web, it comes down to a matter of preference. Right now, I’ll share some insights into a couple of the more popular search engines. At the end of this section, I'll list several more that you can investigate on your own.
Yahoo is the most popular search engine on the web. It gives you two different ways to look for information. On the Yahoo! home page, there are dozens of categories. Let's say we are looking for International Teamworks on the web. We would browse through the following categories. Notice that each category narrows us down closer and closer to the desired target.
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Finally, we get to a page with International Teamworks!! |
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When you click through the Yahoo! categories, you might find yourself
roaming all over the place as various topics catch your eye. That's
okay. That's part of the fun of the web. You might want to jump around
from place to place in Yahoo! just to get a sense of what is out there.
Yahoo! can also provide you with a keyword search. Most search engines provide you with some variation of the keyword search. The keyword search is usually going to be a much quicker way to get at your target sites.
How to Do it
- Type your keywords into the box provided.
- Click the SEARCH button.
- Refine your search if necessary. If you get hundreds (or thousands, or millions) of pages, add some additional keywords to your search and try again.
- Explore the results.
Google is a relatively new search engine that is a bit different from the others. The basics are still the same but there are some added features. For example, if you hit the I'M FEELING LUCKY BUTTON, you won't get a list of 100 (or 1,000 or 1,000,000+) sites. Instead, Google will jump directly to the first web page on the search list. If that site wasn’t what you were looking for, you can always hit the BACK button to return to Google. Then you can ask to see the complete list of matching sites. As with Yahoo! and most other search sites, you can also search by categories.
Finding the right combination of keywords is an important skill to develop. It's possible to generate millions of matching web pages for keywords that seem to be fairly limiting. Let's go through an example using Google. In this search, we'll look for Restaurants in Tempe, Arizona.
Here's my first attempt using the phrase, "Restaurants in Tempe."
Notice that the search ignored the word "in." It's a common word that doesn't add anything to the search. In fact, in some searches it can cause problems. When you search, you should leave out the connecting words. Stick with just the KEY words.
Look at how many matches I got from that search. 2, 820! That’s a huge number. Here are some ways that I could narrow down my search. For example, I can make sure that I’m only getting restaurants in Tempe, Arizona and not some other Tempe (or a restaurant that happens to be on Tempe Street, or owned by Mr. And Mrs. Tempe.). Also, I can narrow down what kind of food I’m looking for. Let’s try Italian!
As you can see, I have narrowed down my search to 274 sites. This is still a lot, but I can see a couple of good possibilities in the first two listings.
An Incomplete List of Search Engines
You can use any of the following search engines to find even more SEARCH ENGINES. These are just a few of the most popular search sites.
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Excite |
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Yahoo |
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Lycos |
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Alta Vista |
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Infoseek |
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GoTo.com |
These last two are called meta-searches. They actually search the search engines and report the results back to you.
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Metacrawler |
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Savvysearch |
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| Dogpile | www.dogpile.com |
Even with millions of web sites to look at, most people find a few sites that they regularly visit. Rather than having to type in the address each time, you can create a shortcut to the site that is stored in your browser. In Explorer, these are called "Favorites." In Netscape, they are called "Bookmarks." Click on one of the diagrams below to learn how to use Favorites and Bookmarks.
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