Browser Basics:
Web Directory

Step-by-Step: Keyword Search

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What you will learn:

to choose a category and subcategories to search categories with keywords

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Web Directory: Choose categories

You are interested in recipes for octopus and other seafoods. You decide that your search for recipes that use octopus can be expanded somewhat. You will try the categories in the web directory. In this simulation, only certain of the choices will actually do anything. You can't go wrong!

Start with:

1. Return to the home page for Quick Search. (Hint: Click on the magnifying glass at the top of your last search page or from My Home page click on the Search the Web link.)
    
2. Scroll down, if necessary, and click on the general category Hobbies.
   A column of subcategories opens to the right.
    
3. Click on the subcategory Cooking.
   Another column of subcategories opens to the right. (Sometimes the nesting of categories seems to go on forever! To be kind, I kept this set of categories short.)
    
4. Click on the subcategory Seafood Recipes.
   

   Finally, a list of results displays at the bottom of the page. All of these pages fit the category, so they all contain a recipe using seafood. But not all will use octopus in particular.

   Remember that a web directory lists only a few of the pages on the Web. The sites that appear in a category usually cover the topic as a whole. You would not likely find the individual pages inside a site in this list.

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Web Directory: Keyword search

There may be thousands of different subcategories in a web directory. With so many choices, it can be hard to know where to look for the category that has the sites you want. You can search the web directory itself to find a site that might lead you to an appropriate category.

1. Scroll back up to the top of the home page for Quick Search.
    
2. Select  the categories  in the Seach where? box.
    
3. Type in the keyword text box the word  octopus .
    
4. Click the Search button.

   A new page displays the categories that actually use the word and then lists the web pages in the web directory that contain the word octopus. In some search pages you might next find a list of pages from the Web which are not in the web directory. These would come from a partner search engine site.

   
   
5. Scroll the page to see what the search found. Several categories contain pages that use the word octopus but only one category uses octopus in its own name. Notice that a page can appear in more than one category, as does the page The Dock.
   

   With this search you should get better results, but fewer of them than you got when you searched the whole Web. Finding a category that actually uses the word you are searching with is hitting the jackpot. You may be a big winner!

6. Click on the red category Octopus at the top of the results.
   

   A page appears that lists the items in this category. It is a short list. From the brief descriptions, it does not appear that these pages will have recipes. This category is about animals rather than food. Should have noticed that!

   
   
7. Use the Back button to return to the page of results.
    
8. Scroll the page, looking at the categories for the sites that used your search word.

   One category looks interesting. It seems to have recipes that use octopus. You would want to visit this category if you thought there might be other entries you could use. (This is the same category you found by expanding the list of categories.) Enough for now!