Searching the Internet
By Gerard Evans
What is a search engine?
Essentially, a search engine is simply a webpage you can go to and then use to search through the other pages on the internet. You can use them to look for text, information, pictures, businesses, old friends, pretty much anything you want.
So how does it work? Well, you enter a word or phrase and the search engine page returns a list of websites that it considers the most relevant to your search. In the early days of the internet there were several search engines competing for your attention, but as they all started to expand into different areas and offer different services, a new search engine came out. Dedicated to simplicity and the accuracy of it's results, it swept all the competition away... that search engine was and is Google.
Introducing Google
You've probably heard of Google - it's so popular now that 'Googling' has become a word in itself to describe using said search engine to find information on the net. Although it's far from being the only search engine, it's by far the biggest and most popular, because essentially it's the best. I'll list some of the others later on, but we'll concentrate on Google for the purposes of this article.
How to search with Google
If you go to Google's home page, you'll see the following:
Obviously, you can type in the phrase you want to search for. Let's say that we're searching for a Bulgarian Stamp Collecting...
The results page explained
Your results page will look like the above, but without the coloured rectangles which I've added to illustrate the page sections.
The green section allows you the option to change the results so only UK websites appear. Useful if you're looking for a dentist but don't want to travel to Chicago, for instance.
The yellow section is the results Google thinks are the most relevant to your search - this is usually the most useful place to follow.
There are other results too, however, in the red section. These websites have paid to appear and as such are essentially adverts, though that doesn't mean they can't sometimes be useful. Sometimes these will appear above the yellow box, but they will be highlighted as sponsored links so you will know that they are different from the most organic relevant searches.
Finally, the light blue rectangle at the top lets you search specifically for images, news, videos and much more. It also gives you access to the wonderful Google maps, where you can lose yourself for hours!
Refining Your Search
If we search for Bulgarian Stamp Collecting, we'll get results for all 3 words. If, however, we put it in inverted commas - "Bulgarian Stamp Collecting", then only the phrase itself will be searched for.
If we want to search for Bulgarian Stamp but avoid any pages with Collecting on them, we put a minus sign before the word collecting: Bulgarian Stamp -Collecting. Similarly, if we want every page to have the word Stamp on it, then we use the plus sign to search for search for Bulgarian +Stamp Collecting
NB If you do find yourself searching for Bulgarian Stamp Collecting, it may be time to get out a bit more!
The other search engines
As mentioned, Google isn't the only place you can search - some of the other popular places are listed in the useful links box at the top of this article.
So I hope that will help you find what you want - the internet is an unprecedented goldmine of information on pretty much everything you could ever want to know about. Happy searching!
Next time, we'll have a look at beating the credit crunch by accessing a wealth of legal free software alternatives to the usual tools you use.
Please feel welcome to ask any questions pertaining to this article in our forum, and to suggest topics for forthcoming columns.
Gerard Evans runs Abisti Web Design.
- A search engine is a webpage you can use to search through the other pages available on the internet.
- You just enter in your search terms and the engine will return the most relevant pages to these.
- The more relevant your key terms are, the more relevant your results will be.
- Most people find that Google.com is the easiest and most effective of the search engines available.
- Remember that results can be organic or sponsored.
