Effective tips for finding information on the Internet. He who seeks will find: secrets of effective Google search
16.Searching for information on the Internet
The information posted on the World Wide Web amounts to a huge number of bytes. To search for information on the World Wide Web, special websites are used - information retrieval systems. They allow you to use keywords to find information resources related to keywords. This could be text containing keywords, or graphic image one of the keywords. Examples of information retrieval systems are Google systems and Yandex.
Search for information– one of the most popular tasks in practice that any Internet user has to solve.
There are three main ways to search for information on the Internet:
1. Specifying the page address.
3. Contacting a search engine (search server).
Method 1: Specifying the page address
This is the fastest search method, but it can only be used if you know exactly the address of the document or the site where the document is located.
Don’t forget the ability to search the web page open in the browser window (Edit-Find on this page...).
This is the least convenient way, since with its help you can search for documents that are only close in meaning to the current document.
Method 3: Accessing a search engine
Using hypertext links, you can travel endlessly in the information space of the Network, moving from one web page to another, but if you consider that many millions of web pages have been created in the world, it is unlikely that you will be able to find the necessary information on them in this way.
Special search engines (also called search engines) come to the rescue. Search server addresses are well known to everyone who works on the Internet. Currently, the following search engines are popular in the Russian-speaking part of the Internet: Yandex (yandex.ru), Google (google.ru) and Rambler (rambler.ru
Search engine- a website that provides the ability to search for information on the Internet.
Most search engines look for information on websites World Wide Web, but there are also systems that can search for files on FTP servers, products in online stores, and information in Usenet newsgroups.
According to the operating principle Search engines are divided into two types: search directories and search indexes.
Search directories serve for thematic search.
The information on these servers is structured by topics and subtopics. If you intend to cover a specific topic, it is not difficult to find a list of web pages dedicated to it.
A directory of Internet resources or a directory of Internet resources or simply an Internet directory is a structured set of links to sites with a brief description of them.
Search indexes work as alphabetical indexes. The client specifies a word or group of words that characterizes his search area and receives a list of links to web pages containing the specified terms.
The first search engine for the World Wide Web was Wandex, a now-defunct index developed by Matthew Gray of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993.
How does a search index work?
Search indexes automatically, using special programs (web spiders), scan Internet pages and index them, that is, they enter them into their huge database.
Search robot(“web spider”) - a program that is an integral part search engine and designed to crawl Internet pages in order to enter information about them (keywords) into the search engine database. At its core, the spider most closely resembles a regular browser. It scans the contents of the page, uploads it to the server of the search engine to which it belongs and sends it through links to the following pages.
In response to a request where to find the necessary information, the search server returns a list of hyperlinks leading to web pages on which the necessary information is available or mentioned. The list can be of any extent, depending on the content of the request.
http://www.yandex.ru/
Yandex - Russian system search on the web. The company's website, Yandex.ru, was opened on September 23, 1997. The company's head office is located in Moscow. The company has offices in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Odessa and Kyiv. The number of employees exceeds 700 people.
The word “Yandex” (consisting of the letter “Ya” and part of the word index; a play on the fact that the Russian pronoun “Ya” corresponds to the English “I”) was coined by Ilya Segalovich, one of the founders of Yandex, currently serving as the company’s technical director.
Yandex Search allows you to search the RuNet for documents in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Romanian, English, German and French, taking into account the morphology of Russian and English languages and proximity of words in a sentence. A distinctive feature of Yandex is the ability to fine-tune the search query. This is achieved through a flexible query language.
By default, Yandex displays 10 links on each results page; in the search results settings, you can increase the page size to 20, 30 or 50 found documents.
From time to time, Yandex algorithms responsible for the relevance of search results change, which leads to changes in the results of search queries. In particular, these changes are aimed at combating search spam, which leads to irrelevant results for some queries.
http://www.google.ru/
Internet search engine leader Google occupies more than 70% of the world market. It currently registers about 50 million search queries daily and indexes more than 8 billion web pages. Google can find information in 115 languages.
According to one version, Google is a distorted spelling of the English word googol. "Googol" is a mathematical term for one followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was first described in the book Mathematics and the Imagination by Kasner and James Newman. Google's use of the term reflects the challenge of organizing the vast amounts of information on the Internet.
Google's interface contains a fairly complex query language that allows you to limit your search to specific domains, languages, file types, and so on.
http://www.rambler.ru/
Rambler Media Group is an Internet holding company that includes as services a search engine, a rating classifier of Russian Internet resources, and an information portal.
Rambler was created in 1996.
The Rambler search engine understands and distinguishes between words in Russian, English and Ukrainian. By default, the search is carried out in all forms of the word.
Logos of the largest search engines
Every day we look for various information on the Internet, be it a description of our favorite movie or a report by a prominent scientist. We have long been accustomed to the design of the main pages of the largest search engines - Google and Yandex and visit them dozens of times a day.
Have you often thought about information search rules?
I don’t think often (I haven’t thought much about it myself), but I noticed that sometimes finding the information I need takes quite a bit. long time. In this article I will try to talk about ways to reduce search time and increase its effectiveness.
Rules for searching information in search engines
How to reduce search time and improve search results, general recommendations:
- Queries should be simple. If you are looking for a business, simply enter its name, or at least the part of the name that you remember for sure. If you are looking for a specific concept, place or product, start with its title or name. If you are looking for a pizzeria, just enter the word "pizzeria" and the name of your city or postal code. Most queries don't require rare operators or sophisticated syntax. The simpler the better.
- Think about what words are present on the page you are looking for. A search engine is not a person. This is a program that compares the words you type and the words that are on web pages. Use words that are most likely to appear on the page you are looking for. For example, instead of [ I have a headache ] enter [ headache ], because this is the term that will be used on the page dedicated to medicine. Request [in which country are bats considered a good omen? ] understandable to a person, but the document containing the answer may not contain these words. Enter better [bats are considered a good omen in] or even [bats are a good omen], since these words are most likely present on desired page.
- Describe what you need using as few words as possible. Each word in the query serves to narrow and refine the search area. Since all words are used, each additional word limits the range of results. If you enter too many restrictions, you may miss useful information. Start your search with a few keywords. Even if you don't find what you're looking for, review the results you find and you'll know what additional words you should include in your next query to get more relevant results. For example, a simple request [weather Minsk] will give best results than a longer query [weather forecast for Minsk Belarus].
- Choose more informative words. The more descriptive a word is used, the more likely the results are to be relevant. Words like “document,” “website,” “company,” or “information” are usually unnecessary. However, remember that even if you use the right word, but most people rarely use it, the word may not end up on the right page. For example, request [popular ringtones] more informative and specific than [popular ringtones].
Search engine developers have developed special language search queries (a language of unique rules for searching for information), which makes it easier and faster to find information on the Internet. Below I will give examples of the use of expressions of this “language”.
Which search engine to use: Google or Yandex?
When I was inexperienced, I only used one search engine to search. But experience has shown that this approach is ineffective, because each search engine has its own unique patented search algorithm and, accordingly, its own pros and cons. It is much more important to understand for which types of search queries use one or another search engine. Exists following types search queries:
- Navigation queries– these are queries whose purpose is to find a specific places on the Internet. For example, a company website or the website of a recently visited forum, searching for a link to a blog, etc.
- Information requests– such queries are entered if they want to receive some intelligence or find the one you need information on the Internet. For example, searching for history information Ancient Rome or searching for results of a football match, etc.
- Transactional requests- this is a type of request that is entered in order to perform some action on the Internet - a transaction (buy, download, upload, subscribe, etc.)
- Fuzzy queries– these are general, specific queries that, as a rule, enter inexperienced users. For example, “mobile phone”, “music”, “flowers”, etc.
Features of the Google search engine
This search engine is best used for navigation queries or searching for a site address. The algorithm of this search engine pays special attention to the type domain name and link. I have seen several times how, when entering a fuzzy query, the TOP 10 results showed sites that had no content at all. We should also not forget that Google is an international search engine, i.e. best solution to search for information in a foreign language.
Features of the Yandex search system
The domestic search engine is excellent for searching information on the Internet for information queries. It indexes Runet very well, its algorithm has already been refined many times, and it is also optimized for searching information in Russian. It is noteworthy that Yandex also received the status of an international search engine; this happened on May 19, 2010 ().
Yandex search query language
Example | Meaning |
"Come to us for morning pickle" | The words come in a row in the exact form |
"The *ambassador has arrived" | Missing word in quote |
half a slice & corn | Words within one sentence |
equip && get | Words within one document |
capercaillie | partridge | someone | Search for any of the words |
you can't<< винить | Non-ranking “and”: the expression after the operator does not affect the position of the document in the search results |
I must /2 execute | Distance within two words in any direction (that is, one word can occur between given words) |
state business &&/3 you catch the thread | Distance 3 sentences in any direction |
something I ~~ understand | Elimination of a word I'll understand from search |
with my /+2 intelligence | Distance within two words in direct order |
tea ~ laptem | Search for a sentence where the word is tea meets without a word bast shoe |
cabbage soup /(-1 +2) slurping | Distance from one word in reverse order to two words in forward order |
! I'm thinking! What ! why | Words in exact form with specified case |
it turns out && (+ on | ! to me) | Parentheses form groups in complex queries |
!! policy | Dictionary form of the word |
title: (in country) | Search by document titles |
url: ptici.narod.ru/ptici/kuropatka.htm | Search by URL |
certainly inurl: vojne | Search based on URL fragment |
host: lib.ru | Search by host |
rhost: ru.lib.* | Search by host in reverse entry |
site: http://www.lib.ru/PXESY/FILATOW | Search across all subdomains and pages of a given site |
mime: pdf | Search by one file type |
lang: en | Search limited by language |
domain: ru | Domain-limited search |
date: 200712* | Search with date restrictions |
date: 20071215.. 20080101, date:> 20091231 | Search limited by date range |
cat: 11000051 | Search by Yandex.Catalogue category |
Google Search Language
OPERATOR EXAMPLE | CONTENT OF PAGES FOUND | |||
vacation Hawaii | two words vacation And Hawaii. | |||
Maui OR Hawaii | or a word Maui or word Hawaii | |||
« Every word « | exact phrase every word | |||
virus - computer | word virus but NOT a word computer | |||
+ sock | just a word sock, and not its plural forms and synonyms | |||
~ car loan | loan information for cars with various synonyms: truck, car, etc. | |||
define: computer | word definitions computer on the Internet | |||
red * blue | words red And blue separated by a few words. | |||
I'll be lucky! | this button will take you to the page of the first result found without showing all the results | |||
CALCULATOR OPERATORS | MEANING | ENTER INTO SEARCH BOX | ||
+ | addition | 45 + 39 | ||
— | subtraction | 45 – 39 | ||
* | multiplication | 45 * 39 | ||
/ | division | 45 / 39 | ||
% of | percentage of | 45% of 39 | ||
^ | power of a number | 2^5 (2 to the 5th power) | ||
ADDITIONAL OPERATORS | MEANING | SEARCH QUERY AND ITS RESULTS | ||
site: | Search only one site | admission site:www.stanford.edu (Search for admissions information on the Stanford University website) | ||
[#] … [#] | Search in a range of numbers | DVD player $100..150 (Search DVD player from $100 to $150) | ||
link: | Referring Pages | link:www.stanford.edu(Find pages linking to the Stanford University website) | ||
info: | Page information | info:www.stanford.edu(Getting information about the Stanford University website) | ||
related: | Similar pages | related:www.stanford.edu(Find sites similar to the Stanford University site) |
Results
In this article I reviewed information search rules, i.e. ways to reduce time spent searching various information on the Internet. Absolutely all search engines were not considered here, but if you follow the rules described above, you can save a lot of your personal time. So, basic rules for searching information on the Internet:
- Do not enter too long search terms - this reduces the search area and you may miss important information.
- Use informative words, try to avoid common phrases and rarely used synonyms
- Use different search engines to various types search queries
- Use specially designed
Searching for information is one of the tasks that every Internet user has to solve.
When starting to search for data on the Internet, it is worth determining search purpose. It is useful to answer the following questions for yourself:
- Do you know the addresses of network resources from which you can start your search?
- What do you already know about the problem you are looking for information about?
- What keywords should you start your search with?
- How much time are you willing to spend searching for the data you need?
There are three main ways to search for information on the Internet:
Method 1:
Specifying the page address
This is the most quick way search, but it can only be used if the exact address of the document or the site where the document is located is known.
Method 2:
Navigation via hyperlinks
This is the least convenient method, since it can be used to search for documents that are only close in meaning to the current document. But this method is very simple and suitable for a novice user.
Method 3:
Accessing a search engine
Special search engines (also called search engines) come to the rescue.
The result of the request is a list of links to Web pages, next to which there are specified text fragments. Most Popular search servers: Yandex
(yandex.ru), Google
(google.ru) and Rambler
(rambler.ru).The query languages of different search engines are somewhat different from each other.
Yandex search engine
- H To find information using the Yandex search engine, open the main page. The line for entering a search query is located at the top of the page, in the area highlighted with a yellow background.
Having received such a command, Yandex will scan its entire database and try to find web pages in it where the word or phrase we entered appears. At the same time, we must take into account in advance that the more extensive our request, the fewer web pages will correspond to it.
- P by default on one page Yandex displays only 10 such links, so to get acquainted with full results search, you will need to flip through pages using digit links.
- TO Each resource found in the search results is represented by the title of the web page and the link text. In addition, in most cases, the search engine displays a small piece of text contained on a particular web page found that matches your query text. In this case, the words that we entered for the search will be highlighted in bold in these fragments.
- IN at the bottom of the search results page there is a line "in other search engines" . Next to these words there are links to several other popular search engines. Therefore, if we have not found the information we need using Yandex, we can use other search engines by clicking on the link.
You can search for information in Yandex
V simple and advanced search mode.
- Simple search
Before you start typing a query into the search bar of a search engine, carefully formulate .
The clearer the chosen wording, the fewer unnecessary sites the search engine will offer you in search results.
- Advanced Search
To get to a web page that provides such opportunities, you must use a link with the name of the type "Advanced Search" .
By clicking on this link, we will see a large search form in which you can specify many parameters.
The Yandex search system allows, for example, to configure search parameters for words depending on their location
(side by side, in the same sentence, on the same page) and forms.
In addition, it can search web pages by their language
(Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, etc.), according to date last change
and even by file format
web pages.
Finally, with the help of Yandex, you can search for information on a specific site. This can be useful if the site you need does not have a built-in search engine.
Each search engine has its own query languages. We will meet logical query language for Yandex, which allows you to enter additional service commands into the search bar in regular search mode that clarify your requirements. Let's look at some of these commands.
- Use "+" and "-" signs.
For example, if you want to find out about aquarium fish, but without selling or breeding, then type in the search bar:
"aquarium fish - breeding - sale."
- Search for an exact match - the "!" sign.
For example, the query!ivanov will only find pages mentioning this surname, and not the city “Ivanovo”.
- Search for an exact phrase - quotes.
Quotes force the search engine to select only documents in which the words from the query are in exactly the same order in which we specified them in search query. If there are no quotation marks, then at the request “who is to blame and what to do”, the search engine can offer us a page containing the phrase “who is to blame - do what they say” or “well, who is to blame that Pyotr Petrovich does not know how to make dumplings " Formally, the search engine will cope with its work, because the specified passages contain all the words from the entered phrase. But the fact that they are not at all in the order in which we need is another question, which is being clarified using quotes.
When working with search engines, sooner or later we will come across the word "relevance".Relevance— this is the degree of correspondence of the found documents to our request. For example, in Yandex it can be found at the bottom of every web page containing search results, immediately below a set of link numbers. Here it is used as a parameter for the Sorted function. In addition to the relevance option, a date option is also available.
If pages in search results are sorted by relevance, this means that sites with the highest level of relevance to your query are listed at the very beginning, followed by resources with a lower level of relevance, etc.
Children's search engines
- To protect children from necessary information, special children's search engines have been created that do not index all sites, but only sites with children's or children's themes.
Yeah not only search service. Here you can find everyone’s favorite cartoons, coloring books, watching filmstrips, help with various school subjects, etc.
Quintura for Children is a visual search for children's resources, designed specifically for children and aimed at primary and secondary school students.
The interactive Quintura cloud is used for searching. The colorful and attractive interface of the service contains several interactive pictures, by clicking on which children can immediately choose a topic of interest to them, for example: science, music, dinosaurs or games.
- Home - Children's search.
There is a certain technique for obtaining data from the Internet. If you do everything according to it, and not as you have to, then the search will take very little time and lead to the desired result easily and painlessly.
Of course, there is always the possibility that there is simply no relevant information on the Internet, but if you search “according to science,” then, as a rule, you will be able to find something.
The first thing we need to figure out is where we will look. The second point is the correct formulation of the request. But first things first.
Where is all the information on the Internet?
If in our ordinary “real” world all text information is, relatively speaking, in books, then on the Internet it is posted on websites. There are billions of these same sites on the Internet on a variety of topics.
In order to get a book for free in the “real” world, you need to go to the library. There are similar structures on the Internet too, they are called search engines.
We can go into such a system and type in something we want to find. If the request is made correctly, and the search engine has data on this matter, it will give it to us. That is, he will find suitable sites, and to be more precise, individual pages sites that, in his opinion, match the request.
Which search engines to use
The best way to find information is through largest systems- Yandex (yandex.ru) and Google (google.ru). This best search engines of all that exist. Yandex is Russian, Google is international.
I won’t tell you how to use them now - most already know how to do it. Let's talk better about in what situation which system is preferable.
If you do not know how to use search engines, read the lesson “ How and what you can find on the Internet ».
I would recommend the following: when you are looking for information in Russian, first try searching for it through Yandex. On the Russian-language Internet, this system is more popular and, as experience shows, is better suited for “our” people.
If Yandex didn’t show anything suitable, then ask Google the same. You can do this directly from Yandex. To do this, you need to go down to the bottom of the page with unsuccessful search results until this inscription:
If you need to find data in English or another foreign language, I recommend going straight to Google. After all, this is an international search engine and it searches better for other countries.
How to formulate a request
How we “ask” the system will determine whether or not we receive the necessary information. The search engine will give us the result in any case, but not always the one we would like to receive.
Many people think that the ability to correctly formulate a request comes with experience that accumulates over the years. It is true, but this happens only because a person simply begins to understand (often intuitively) how the search engine works.
We must remember that any search engine is a machine. You can call it another way: program, artificial intelligence. That is, this is not a person, but a soulless system. She does not understand understatement, vague wording, hints and irony. Although in lately technology has improved significantly.
Let's look at composing a query through the eyes of a search engine. Let's say I open a search engine and type the word “printer” in the print query line. After that I click on the search button.
The system receives a command to “search” the entire Internet and find information on the printer for me. But what exactly do I need? Do I want to buy a printer or just read about it? Or maybe my printer is broken and I want to find a repair shop? Or buy it consumables(cartridges, ink)?
The search engine is confused, so it tries to provide all the options. Here are the results it shows me:
As you can see, there are articles about the printer, and online stores where you can buy them, and repair shops, and even stores that sell cartridges.
Let's say I need to find out information about specific model printer. But there are thousands of them - how does a search engine know which one I’m interested in?! He can't read minds...
To help him, you need to type exactly what you need to find. Not just “printer” - this is a very broad concept - but a specific model.
And the result will not be long in coming:
This means that in order for the search engine to understand us, we need to formulate the request more specifically. But do not overdo it - it is advisable not to use unnecessary words, otherwise the system may simply get confused.
Example. My video stopped working. Moreover, it works on the computer itself, but not on the Internet. You could type the following query: “What to do if the video doesn’t work.” But, firstly, this request is inaccurate - after all, I only have problems with it on the Internet. And, secondly, it contains a lot of unnecessary words.
It’s better to type the following: “video on the Internet does not work.”
By the way, if you make a grammatical error when typing, most likely the search engine will automatically correct it and show the correct results - without an error. Place punctuation marks in the request and use capital letters is also not required.
Clarification of the request
Even if the user always remembers that queries must be accurate and specific, “misunderstandings” with the search engine still happen. In this case, you just need to clarify the request - add a word or several words. Then the system will understand what exactly we want and show more suitable results.
Everything seems to be accurate and specific, but the results I get are not the same. The system actually gives me information about the film and even sites where I can watch it. But this is absolutely not the film we need. Apparently there are several of them with this name.
This means you need to clarify your request. To do this, I’m just finishing typing some additional information(year, country, director).
What to do if it still says “wrong”
It happens that the request is well written and there is a clarification for it, but still the results are not satisfactory. Either the information is wrong or its quality is poor.
We have already said that in this case it makes sense to go to another search engine. But what to do if the picture is the same there?!
Then you should reformulate the request - write the same thing, but in different words. And sometimes it’s better to even expand it - make it less precise.
Example. Let’s say I’m a pensioner and want to learn a computer for free via the Internet. I type the most accurate request “free computer courses on the Internet for pensioners."
I'm getting results. Some of them are paid courses for pensioners. Others are free, but on-site. And the third - it’s not clear at all.
This means you just need to reformulate the request. For example, instead of “computer courses,” type “computer training.”
Or you can try to shorten it altogether:
Conclusions
- We search for Russian-language queries first in Yandex. If it doesn’t work, go search on Google (you can directly from the yandex.ru results).
- We search for queries in English and other foreign languages on Google.
- In the case when we want to read about some phenomenon, object or person “in general,” it is better to type a general request. Example: printer, default, fellini.
- And if you need to know something specific, we try to formulate the request more precisely. Example: printer device, default in Russia 1998, Fellini filmography.
- If the result does not meet expectations, we clarify the request. In the case when the exact request does not give desired result, let's reformulate it.