WEBSITES:
Most of us are aware that there are several fine search engines available to help us find what we are looking for on the internet. There are arguments in the industry about which ones are the best, largest, fastest, and most widely used. Personally I use AllTheWeb (www.alltheweb.com) for most of my searches, as well as its sister service Yahoo (www.yahoo.com). Microsoft, AOL, and several others offer comprehensive search engines.
The search engine that gets the most attention, and arguably the most intentional hits, is Google (www.google.com). Most of us know how to do simple searches by typing the search terms in the search box, and being presented with a list of items. Almost all of the major search engines offer far more than simple searches and provide a mechanism for detailed searches and other non-search related solutions. Google offers quite a bit more than simple searches.
For those who want to do more with Google, Google has created a “cheatsheet” at www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html, where many of the specialized search methods and functions are listed. The sheet has many tips to ease and speed searches, as well as other useful hints and tips about other non-search functions. Most of us know that if we enter a selection of terms, the engine will find websites and other resources with those terms somewhere in the body of the text. All too often, when we want to find something using a simple search, the search engine finds so many resources that it is difficult to locate exactly what is desired. To restrict the results of the searches to more relevant information, thus reducing the number of selections presented, Google and other search engines use a form of “Boolean Logic” where common terms such as “and” or “or” can be used to narrow the search. If I just entered the words “Beaumont” and “Texas” in the search box, millions of results will be listed that have both of the words in the body. If the search term is entered with the quotation marks as “Beaumont Texas”, then only results where the adjacent word pair “Beaumont Texas” will be displayed. By using a minus sign “-“ such as “Beaumont –Texas” only results with the word “Beaumont” and not including sites with the word “Texas” will be displayed, resulting in a much smaller pool of results. By placing an asterisk “*” between terms, such as “time * cable” will result in a list where the words “time” and “cable” are separated by exactly one other word.
A variety of other terms can be used to limit search results to the desired outcome. For example, if the user is looking for registration information from my college, the user may use the term “site:” to restrict the term to a particular website, in the context of “registration site:www.lit.edu”, which will only return registration information from www.lit.edu. With a similar syntax, other functions are available. For example the function “date:” will only return information from a recent period of months, such as “virus date:3” will only return virus information that was posted in the last three months.
Much has been written about children being ensnared into viewing inappropriate adult material on the internet, and this can happen while searching as well. The search limiter “safesearch:” will exclude adult content, as used in the context “safesearch: sex education”.
Google can be used for a lot more than searching, as it also has other integral functions available from the search box. By simply typing an area code and phone number in the box, the results will be the owner of that listed phone number, as well as his address, and the option to map the address using a variety of mapping sources. This feature, while not unique to Google, has enraged some privacy advocates.
The search box can also be used as a substitute for a calculator. By typing “1 + 2” in the search box will result in a 3 being displayed. The use of a dash “-“ means minus. An asterisk is used for multiplication, with “2 * 3” showing 6. A slash “/” is for division, with “8 / 4” showing a 2. Percentages can be calculated as well using “% of” feature, as with “20% of 40” showing the answer as 8. Exponents are calculated with a caret “^”, such as “2^3”, two cubed, yielding the answer of 8. Complex calculations can be done by stringing the items in appropriate algebraic fashion.
Google offers much more than just website text searches and calculator functions; it also has a variety of other services. Subsidiary sites of Google are searchable for news content (news.google.com), images and photos (images.google.com), and bargains (froogle.com). One of my personal favorites is maps.google.com where street maps and driving directions can be generated. One interesting feature is that street maps can be shown in the conventional map format, or in terms of a satellite image! If I type “795 Willow Street, Beaumont, TX” in the search box of maps.google.com, a zoomable street map centered on 795 Willow is created, with the zoom control on the top left of the image. Other functions are available at this point; a balloon appears over the location with “Directions: To here – From here” which can create turn by turn directions either from local points, or elsewhere on the continent. On the top right of the map page is a link “Satellite”; clicking on the link will convert the traditional road map into a satellite image. This satellite image can also be zoomed in for more detail (up to the maximum resolution of the image), or zoomed out to a panoramic view from space.
Google, as well as the other search engines, offer a wealth of information in addition to the traditional text based searches.
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