Tips and Tricks for Developing an

Effective Search Tool Kit.

Workshop presented by
Wayne Howes.
 Build a Search Tool Kit

We are living in an age where information on any subject, is

available to anyone with access to the Internet. This information
follows no particular structure and can be placed on the Internet
by anyone. Finding relevant and reliable information is an important
form of literacy. Using search engines effectively involves
developing a range of skills and strategies for successful
information problem solving.
 Common Issues When Searching Online

Difficulties constructing appropriate search terms,

Frequent retrieval of unrelated and often inappropriate sites,

Incredible amount of time sifting and sorting,

Identifying reliable information,

Overwhelming amounts of information presented,

Location of relevant information.

 What are the Search Tools for our toolkit?

Strategies for evaluating the content of what you find on-line, verifying
its authenticity, and placing it in the context of other information
sources.

Ability to establish keywords and phrases, our students need

to know how to identify words or phrases that should appear in any
document they may want to know about.
Techniques for combining three or four search terms for more precise
information gathering than using single search terms.

Skills for using advanced search options in search engines for increased
efficiency.
A range of search engine options that could contribute to greater search
success.
 Conducting a search for information.

Define a need for information

Recognise prior knowledge
Initiate by brainstorming ideas and defining key words that you
would expect to be included in this information
Develop a strategy for combining 3 or 4 search terms
Locate suitable search engine, use the advanced search option.
Use a range of Tips and tricks
Browse your search results don’t search them, browse beyond your
first page of results.
If you need to search further; use a different search engine, use
a different combination of search terms.
Validate the source of information before your use it.
 How do we start to learn about Tools for
Searching?

If you haven’t already, go beyond Google

Learn about how other search engines work differently.
This will have advantages.

Locate a different search engine that suits your needs and focus on it
alone. Become knowledgeable about how you can use it.

Make a habit of using the advanced features of your chosen search

engine.

Apply some of the tip and tricks from from here to test it show your
students some of the tips and tricks.
Search Engines that Provide for Different
Needs
Information Directory

www.yahoo.com

This is a directory that lets you dig down through categories this
can be helpful but prepared to spend some time searching in
these cases.

Or you can try

Yahoo search: http://search.yahoo.com

This is less cluttered by advertising and provides a range of

options for searching. For better results try the advanced
search.
 A Search Engine that helps refine the
Search.

www.teoma.com

A Powerful search engine that analyses sites and locates them in

related subject communities. Teoma uses Subject Specific
Popularity which ranks sites based the number of same subject
references. It uses three proprietary techniques: refine, results
and resources. Refine allows the searcher to narrow down the focus.
Relevant search results are ranked under the heading of Results.
Teoma also identifies expert resources about a particular subject.
 Searching that Clusters Results

www.vivisimo.com

Vivisimo searches and organizes information into

clusters according to phrases and words within the
search results.
You can search within the cluster using keywords.
.
Combining Several Search Engine
Results into One.

Rather than use just one search engine and wonder if

you could have found better results on a different
search engine, there are search engines that search
several search engines.

www.dogpile.com

This one has been around for a while and searches a

number of popular top search engines. When it has
assembled your search results you have the choice of
viewing by relevance or by search engine. If you are
going to use dog pile regularly you can set up
customized preferences which remain in place until you
change them. You can use this to filter out Adult
content.
Smarter search engines.

Bigger, faster , more powerful sites are developing all the time
with competition by search engines is hotting up all the time.
This has meant that over recent times using search engines
has become more user friendly for those wanting information.

www.alltheweb.com

This search engine promises: “powerful search features that

allow anyone to find anything faster than with any other
search engine”. This is possible because of the features
available in the advanced search of alltheweb. An interesting
claim but what is even more interesting is the fact that
Australia’s Ninemsn site (Australia equivalent to xtra) is
switching from Google to Overture which is the Yahoo fuelled
company that
Visual searching.

www.webbrain.com

The top part of this page provides a mindmap, click on the topic
that is of interest and webbrain will centre itself on this topic.
With related topics branching out.
Click on another topic and the searcher can narrow down the
options.

www.kartoo.com

Kartoo is a metasearch engine with a visual display in the form

of an interactive map.
To the left of the map is a list o topics as you scroll down these
the links appear in your map. To the right of the map are found
sites, as you scroll down through these the links appear in your
map and a description appears to the left of the map.
Specialised kids search engines.

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Kidsclick!/

KidsClick! was created by a group of librarians as a logical step in

guiding young users to valuable and age appropriate web sites. It is
intended to guide users to good sites not block them block them
from bad sites.
There are many useful features available here for students pitched
at a level suitable for lower primary school. Included in these
features are Search lessons, Picture search Tools and sound search
Tools. There is also an advanced search that helps to narrow the
students searches.
Tips and Tricks to Add to your
Searching Tool Kit
Use more terms

Place key words that help to narrow down the

options
Eg “sheep”, will give you something like 6million
results.
“merino lambs” will cut this to 12,000 results.
“merino wether lambs” will bring it down to 600
results
Three or Four well grouped search terms will give
more specific search results.
Browse don’t search

If you know what you are trying to search typing the phrase within
quotation marks is a good starting point.

If you are not sure of what exactly you want, or you want to see the
breadth of material within a topic, you need different strategies.

Browse your search results, for important key ideas.

Browse beyond the first page of results.
Quote phrases

If you want to find an exact phrase, place this phrase inside

quotation marks.

This is a really good way to narrow a search.

Eg. “Internet safety”

Placing Quotation marks around a phrase will tell your search

engine to look for all the words together in a page.
Narrow the focus

Include something unique or distinctive about your search topic.

Eg. If searching for a store or service include part of their address
in your search phrase.

You can use generalist search engines such as google to track down
most types of sites. Sometimes a specialist search engine will help
narrow the focus and achieve results.

For rare second hand or out of print books one of the international
book searches (
www.biblio.com) or
(www.bookfinder.com ).

For audio or video files try (www.siningfish.com )

Search a domain

Most search engines let you restrict your searches to a

particular domain. Do this by adding the keyword plus the
domain name.

Eg. Dolphin research site: nz will find nz sites about dolphins.

Google and Teoma allow this.

You can even narrow this down to search a site for particular
information on a topic.

Eg. Internet securitysite:netguide.co.nz will locate any mention

of internet security on netguide’s web site.
Be an expert, use advanced searches.

Use the advanced search option available on many search

engines.

Usually this is very easy to use, offering you a variety of

options you can switch on or off using dropdown menus an
checkboxes.

Often the advanced option will guide you through the tricks
and tips mentioned here.

Teach students to use the advanced option to search.

Look up the meaning

Look for the meaning of a word using Google’s definitions.

At the very top of the number of results found you will se

search terms underlined. Click on any one of these words to see
the words definition.

Another perhaps more efficient way is to use define: keyword.

Eg. define: colony will result in displays of different definitions.

Other Search engines have definitions of words available.

Teach this to students.
Understand Boolean

Almost all search engines use a series of logic terms to

control searches, called Boolean Operators.

The most common are AND and OR

Notice the Operators are usually typed as capitals.

AND searches for documents that match both terms
Eg. sheep AND dip finds only those documents that refer to both
AND gives you much more focused results than OR.
These Boolean Operators are usually typed in upper case.

OR ; OR searches for documents that match either

search term.
Eg. sheep OR dip finds documents containing references to
both. This could turn up pages referring to sheep, to sheep
dipping, to food dips, to dipsticks and so on…
Avoid irrelevancies

Eliminate unwanted results by using NOT.

Search engines use the keyword NOT to eliminate pages with an

unwanted keyword.

Eg. Repairing windows NOT microsoft NOT xp NOT computer

Another common way of doing this is to place a minus sign (-) in

front of unwanted terms.
Eg. Repairing windows –microsoft –xp –computer
Be aware of the Assumed AND.

Google and some other search engines assume the use of

Boolean AND whenever you type two or more terms.

So searching for guinea pigs will pop up results that match

both terms. Because Google thinks you are searching for
guinea AND pigs. You will get something like 5+ million
results with information about guinea and information
about pigs.

If you want to know about guinea pigs the small popular

children’s pet try “guinea pigs”

Remember
Browse don’t search the results.
Use synonyms

Put a tilde (~) before your search term and some

search engines will search for pages containing the
search term and words with similar meanings.

Eg. ~car pops up pages about automobiles, vehicles,

and trucks.

WARNING this technique can lead to some very

interesting results, so use it with care
“Information skills instruction makes an important
contribution to the development of independent learners.
Information skills instruction integrated into the classroom
content does contribute to the development of constructive
thinkers, learners who take charge of their learning, ask the
appropriate questions, seek information to create and
communicate ideas that reflect their own deep
understanding”

Todd,R. Independent learning and information literacy: An

essential partnership for learning. In Nimon,M.,Learning
Resourcefully. Adelaide, Auslib Press 1996.