More about search engines

These utilities help you find information, companies or people on the Internet. There are various types:

Yahoo: As you have already seen, everything is well-organized by category; highly recommended for looking for a school, a business or a service. By default, if you enter two words, it finds descriptions of sites meeting both criteria. The more words you put, the fewer hits you will get. First the system will show the categories matching your search specification, and then individual URLs. If Yahoo doesn't find what you are looking for in its own database, it will try the same search on Alta Vista.

AltaVista: This search engine has a different approach to finding web sites. It constantly combs the web, adding pages to its index. While a single site might have one page in Yahoo's index, theoretically a given site would have all of its pages indexed on Alta Vista. There is another major difference between Alta Vista and Yahoo; the more words you put, the more hits you get. For example, if you enter the words african music, and there are 400 pages with the word "african" and 500 pages with the word "music", of which 100 have both words, there would be a total of 100+500-100 = 800. What if we are interesed only in those 100 pages with both words? In Alta Vista we simply put a + sign before each word; this way Alta Vista will only present the pages that contain all of these words. Let's try it out:

BS00024A.gif (1893 bytes) Your mission: Go to Yahoo and search for the word Rioja and write down the number of hits. Now try searching on Rioja wines and write down the result. If everything is working properly, you will have had fewer hits on the second search.

Now bop into AltaVista. Remember that you can return to this page at any time using the Back key if you need to re-check anything.

First make a search on Rioja wines. As you can see, there are many more pages shown here than in Yahoo. Write this number down for later comparison.
Now make the same search, putting the plus sign before each word: +Rioja +wines. As you can see, this has narrowed things down by a lot.
And what if we are looking for a page that has those two words in that order? That is, we are not interested in documents with Rioja in one place and wines in another, but the two words together. Put the expressing in quotation marks: "Rioja Wines". Try it out and write the number down.
Still too many pages? If we reduce the search even further to pages that mention manufacturers, let's see what happens. Enter +"Rioja wines" +exporters and check the result.

Time for some levity. How many teachers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Let AltaVista give you the answer. In your search, put "How many teachers does it take to", and if everything goes well and no one has added any new pages this past week, three pages will appear, but since they all copy each other anyway, they all have the same answer. Jump to the page of your choice, then pick Edit / Find on your browser menu to find the word teachers and write down the answer; you'll need it later.

As I mentioned on the previous page, there are other search engines which are well worth investigating. Here are descriptions for some of them:

HotBot: A bit sexier and easier to use than AltaVista. It has managed to index more pages, but AltaVista is more flexible. When you have nothing better to do, you might try them both to see which one you like better.

Four11 Directory Services: The e-mail address search engine par excellence. If you want others to be able to find you, sign yourself up. Search tips: you can find a name by only writing part of it. For example, if you are looking for someone named Ochoa de Eribe, if you put only Ochoa you'll find those whose name is Ochoa or Ochoa de Eribe or Ochoa-Martín. The domain field is good for tracking down employees of a specific company, for example microsoft.com if you want to find someone on Bill Gates' payroll. The domain is also useful for finding someone with a common name. For example, if you are looking for your friend John Smith and you know that he has an account with redestb.es, that information may be all you need to track him down without having to scan long lists of names. If you want to try it out and you are having a hard time finding someone you know, try entering the name Michael McCay if you want to find out a little more about me.

WhoWhere?: Another search device for e-mail addresses which can come in handy if you get no joy out of Four11.

BS00024A.gif (1893 bytes) Your mission, part II: To go to the next page, answer the following questions. If you don't get them right the first time, I'll give you hints.

Don't tell anyone, but ... if you aren't able to get through the above test, click on "Next page" to go to the next topic.

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