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Y ou will use several search services to see if they will find the same pages and how appropriate the pages are for your search. You will compare searching with a single word, two words, and a phrase. You will have something to write for each step below.
If your instructor permits, you may combine your efforts with other students. In this case, all should use the same words but in different search engines. Then you can combine your results to see what your search options are.
If you need to refresh your memory about searching, refer
back to Searching, Searching: Search Engine and Searching: Web Directory.
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Where you are:
JegsWorks >
Lessons > Web
Before you start...
Project 1: Browser Basics
Connecting
IE
Interface
Navigating
Printing
Saving
Searching
Summary
Quiz
Exercises 
 Ex. 1 Hunt I
Ex. 2 Hunt II
Ex. 3 Favorites
Ex. 4 History
Ex. 5 Search
Project 2: HTML Basics
Search
Glossary
Appendix
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Exercise Web 1-5: Search
Purpose: to compare how various search services work
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What you will do:
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use the same search words on several search services
compare the results
make a recommendation about the search services
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- Searching for? What you are going to looking for exactly? You must define what a page must have
to count it as a successful hit. For example, should it contain a copy
of the Constitution of the United States of America, or the budget for
the United Nations, or information on the Jerusalem computer virus? Feel
free to choose something that you really do need to find out, perhaps
for another class.
- Phrase:
Select a phrase of at least 2 keywords
related to your search goal. Do
not count words like a, an, the, but, and … which are ignored by the
search programs.
For example, United
States Constitution or United Nations budget or Jerusalem virus. Do
not use upper case letters unless you really are looking for a proper
name.
- Search services: Choose 3 search services and 1 metasearch site. You may use the links on the My Home or links in the lesson earlier, if you wish.
- Features: List the special features that each of the search services offers
such as searching only pages in a certain language or containing images
or newer than last month or for people and company names. Do any of
these features look especially helpful for your search? If so, include a
search using the feature and also one without using it to see if it
really does help you find pages that are more what you want.
- Chart: Make a chart similar to the example below to record your results.
Include the name of the search service and its URL and any special features used, what word(s) were used for the search, the total
number of pages found in each search, and any good matches in the
first 25 results. If there were no exact matches, write in the
last column your evaluation of how close to a match the first 25 results
were. You should have at least 3 search services and 1 metasearch site with 5
searches in each similar to the example. Note in your chart if you restricted
the search in some way using one of the special features of the search
engine. A true search engine will not have categories or a directory, but most major
sites are combinations these days.
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Search service
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Word(s) / Phrase |
Categories found |
Pages in directory found |
Pages on the Web found |
Successful? |
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Yahoo
http://yahoo.com/ |
Jerusalem |
10 |
331 |
278612 |
None in first 25 |
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virus |
32 |
402 |
610021 |
Several possibles |
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virus Jerusalem |
0 |
0 |
5278 |
Several hits |
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jerusalem virus |
0 |
0 |
5278 |
Several hits |
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+jerusalem +virus |
0 |
0 |
5278 |
Several hits |
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"jerusalem virus" |
0 |
0 |
319 |
Most |
- Analysis: How well did each service do? Which found the most pages? Which found the most relevant pages? Which search words found the most relevant pages? What features of a web page did each search engine treat as most important? Comment on what services you would recommend and why.
This is the last exercise in Browser Basics. You can return now to the beginning of Working with the Web to do another project.
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