Lecture 2

Advanced Web Search

 What you’ll Learn

■ Introduction to search engines

■ Truncation, Quotation Marks and
Wild Cards
■ Search operators
■ Creating search statements
■ Advanced search features
■ Limiting searches by date, language
or document type
 How search Engines Work

• To most people, Internet search engines refer to World

Wide Web search engines.

• The World Wide Web, commonly known as the Web, is an

information system where documents and other web
resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators,
which may be interlinked by hypertext, and are accessible
over the Internet.

• Before the World Wide Web became the most visible part
of the Internet, there were already search engines in place
to help people find information on the Internet.

• Some of the popular names at the time were like

"gopher" and "Archie“. In the late 1980s, getting serious
value from the Internet meant knowing how to use gopher,
 The Web and other services of the web

Search Engines - These tools are really a part of

the World Wide Web and are often used when
looking for information because the Web has
grown so large and is without any inherent
organizational structure.
 The Web and other services of the web

E-mail - Exchanging electronic letters, messages,

and small files.
 The Web and other services of the web

Chat - IRC (Internet Relay Chat) for live

discussions on the Internet.
 The Web and other services of the web

.
Hosting - Making information available to others
on the Internet.
 The Web and other services of the web

FTP - File Transfer Protocol is the most common

method of transferring files between computers via
the Internet.
 The Web and other services of the web

Mailing Lists - E-mail messages forwarded to

everyone on a special interest list.
 Other services of the Internet Besides the
Web

Telnet - Creation of a dumb terminal session to a host computer

in order to run software applications on the host system.
 Other services of the Internet Besides the
Web

Usenet - Newsgroups for receiving news and sending out

announcements.
 Web Search

Spider Web
Google is a website that uses the spider web method in
order to accurately find websites that you are interested
in...............

Advanced Search Techniques

Advanced search options are a set of very useful
features offered by most search
engines and search tools on the Web. Advanced
search gives the Web searcher the ability to narrow
their searches by a series of different filters; i.e.,
language, proximity, domain, etc

Multimedia Searching
Multimedia Searching such as videos, pictures, and
how to use someone’s media legally..........
 How search Engines Work

• A search engine tells you where a file or document

can be found. But first, the file must be located.
• Search engines use special software robots known
as spiders to build lists of the words found on
millions of Web pages.
• When a spider is building its lists of words, the
process is referred to as Web crawling.
• The usual starting points for the spiders are
heavily used servers and very popular pages. The
spider begins with a popular site and indexes the
words on its pages and through every link found
within the website.
• Spiders first look for words in the title, subtitles,
meta tags and other positions of relative
importance for special consideration during a user
search.
 How search Engines Work

Assignment

•Explain how google web search

engine works during page search on
the web.
• State and explain three ways of
improving page indexing during
google web search.

NB: After submission, be prepared to

present your answer to the class.
 Data Centers

All online activities including

web searches are made
possible by data centers
around the world
 Basic Searching

Narrowing Searches
only use words that are key words to help
narrow the number of searches......................

Don’t type long Sentences

USE KEY WORDS....................

Use sites based upon what you are looking

for
If you are looking for videos, use youtube, if you are looking for
images use images.google.com
 Truncation and Quotation Marks

• The two most helpful advanced search

techniques are:
1) Quotation Marks
2) Truncation or Wild Card
 Quotation Marks

•Quotation marks are used around phrases.

By using quotations marks, you are telling the
computer to only bring back pages with the
terms you typed in the exact order you
typed them.
• Example:
• “health care reform”
• instead of
• health AND care AND
reform
 Quotation Marks

For example, if you are interested in finding

information on social networking, it is best to
search for “social networking” in quotation
marks. Otherwise, the computer might search
for social AND networking and find many more
irrelevant results.
 Adding a Minus

• Adding minuses to a specific word tells

the search engine not to search for sites
related to that word. ..........................

For example, I am interested in finding

information on social networking, I can add
words that I do not want the search engine to
include in the search.
E.g.: social media networking -Twitter
 Truncation and Wild Card symbols

• These are used to widen search results.

This ensures you don't miss relevant
records.
• Most databases are not intelligent - they just
search for exactly what you type in.
• Truncation and wild card symbols enable you
to overcome this limitation. These symbols can
be substituted for letters to retrieve variant
spellings and word endings.
 Truncation and Wild Card symbols

• A wild card symbol replaces a single letter

- useful to retrieve alternative spellings and
simple plurals
e.g.
 Truncation and Wild Card symbols

Truncation means to chop off. When you

truncate you chop off the end of the word, so
the computer can search for multiple endings.

For example, if your research question includes

the keyword education. You can truncate
education, so that the computer will find all of
the word ending variations.
Educat* will find:

Education
Educate
Educated
Educating
 Truncation - Hint

• Be careful where you place the

truncation symbol. Educate* will not
find education or educating, although it
will find educate and educated.

• Truncation will not find synonyms (i.e.

scien* will not find the words botany,
biology, or astronomy), although it may
bring up articles on those topics IF they
include the words science, scientific, or
scientist.
 Search Operators - Boolean

• Also known as Boolean operators, search

operators allow you to include multiple words
and concepts in your searches.
• AND retrieves records containing both words.
• E.g. Finance and Accounting
• It narrows your search. Some databases
automatically connect keywords with AND
• OR retrieves records containing either word. It
broadens your search. You can use this to
include synonyms in your search. E.g.
marketing or advertising
• NOT retrieves your first word but excludes the
second.
• LINK:
 Advanced Search

Through this page, you can do some of the

filtering explained earlier by typing the required
text in the textboxes and clicking on “Advanced
Search” button
A click on the “Advanced Search” button without
typing anything brings the webpage on next slide.
 Advanced Search

Here, one can search in A click on the “I’m

some local languages Feeling Lucky” button
as shown under Google displays the Google
offered in:… Doodle Archives page
 Searching by date or language

• Many databases allow you to limit your

search in various ways. Limits are usually
available on advanced search screens, or
you can apply them after doing your
keyword search.
• Examples of the types of limits you can
apply include:
-by date
-by language
-by publication type (eg journal articles,
chapters in books, review articles that
provide detailed summaries of research,
Advanced Search
Searching by File Types - Examples

.doc
site:domainname.com filetype:doc

• Example: site:ug.edu.gh filetype:doc

.pdf
e.g.: site:www.ug.edu.gh filetype:pdf
Searching by File Types - Examples

.ppt
e.g.: Web tutorials filetype:ppt

.gov
e.g.: Ghana government filetype:gov

.gov
Other Advanced Search Operators

AllIntext
This operator will help you find whether all the terms that you
are looking for shows up in the text of that page. This operator,
however, isn’t pin-accurate because it won’t look for text on the
page that appears close together.
e.g. university of ghana allintext:accomodation

Intext
This operator is a more global operator that allows you to find
any terms showing up on a webpage in any area – like the
title, the page itself, the URL, and elsewhere.
e.g. university of ghana intext:accomodation
Other Advanced Search Operators

Allintitle
This search operator is a great way to find blogs that match the content
you are writing about. For example, you could use allintitle to research
what others are doing for that particular topic. Then, you could write your
post to be better than theirs.
e.g. allintitle:banku and okro

Intitle
This is a narrower operator that will help you find more targeted results
for specific search phrases. If you wanted to find pages that are all about
“banku and okro” for example, the following is how you would use it:
e.g. intitle:banku and okro
Other Advanced Search Operators

Allinurl
This one allows you to find pages with your requested search terms within
the URL in internal search pages. For example, say you wanted to perform
research on pages on a site that had the terms “banku and okro”. You would
use the following:
e.g. allinurl:banku and okro

Inurl
If you wanted to find pages on a site that has your targeted search term in
the URL, and the second term in content on a website, you could use this
operator.
e.g. inurl:banku and okro
Other Advanced Search Operators

site
This is used to search for a specific site. To locate a specific site, put “site:” in front of a
site or domain.
e.g. site:youtube.com or site:.gov.

related
This is used to search for related sites. To search for related sites, put “related:” in front of a
web address you already know.
e.g. related:banku and okro

info
This is used to get details of a site. To get details about a site, put “info:” in front of the site
address.
e.g. info:www.ug.edu.gh
cached
This is used to see Google’s cached version of a site. To get google cached version of a
site, put “cached:” in front of the site address.
e.g. cached:www.ug.edu.gh
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly
search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can
search across many disciplines and sources: articles,
theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from
academic publishers, professional societies, online
repositories, universities and other web sites.
Google Scholar
Multi Media Search Techniques

Search by voice
Google Voice Search or Search by Voice is a Google product that
allows users to use Google Search by speaking on a mobile phone
or computer, i.e. have the device search for data upon entering
information ...
Legally Using Pictures or Videos
People who own multi media files have creative common licenses.
This means they can let us use their media or not. All Rights
Reserved, meaning we must get permission from the owners
to use the Media................
Google Images
You can use a picture as your search to find related images from around the
web.
 Conclusion

More Reliable Searching

narrowing searches can get better more reliable sites when
working on projects or papers..............

Less Time Wasted

narrowing searches can take time away from searching when
working on projects or papers...........................
NEXT WEEK – MS_EXCEL