Course Background
In order to effectively communicate search terms with most web search tools (search engines, web directories and meta-search engines) it is important to understand how the tools work and how we can work best with them.
When most people search the web, they go to their favorite search site, type some key words in the search field, click on the search button and hope for results that include a good and pertinent site. While this certainly produces results and often thousands of them, it does not guarantee the results meet the search criteria we've intended. In fact, more than likely, the top ten results will include web pages that are not relevant to our search terms. The reasons for this are many, but mostly it is because we do not know how to speak the search tools language. Furthermore, we probably do not even know that the search tool has a unique language that we need to speak when communicating our requests to it.
The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce you to the proper ways to communicate your search requests to online search tools so that you can begin to receive more focused result lists that include resources more relevant to your needs.
Some Quick Facts About Searching & The World Wide Web
- It is difficult to say how many web pages exist, you can be comfortable in noting that in the summer of 2007, there are well over 10 billion, add about 200 billion every month.
According to the Pew Center for Research/Education
- 72% of students do not look past the top ten results when searching the web for information pertinent to their needs
- 85% of students try another search tool if they cannot find what they are looking for after two attempts at the original
- 65% of students end their search off task never finding what they were originally searching for
