Here’s some tips for how to find the information you want on the Internet. In many cases, you will see a company or organization list the address of their Web site, and all you have to do is enter that address on the address line of your browser to get to the site. But in many more cases, you won’t have that luxury—just a general idea of the information you want to find. What to do then?

Fortunately, several Web sites will help you to search for the information you want. They are known as “search engines” because their function is to search the Internet for the information you want. Some of the more common ones are Google, Yahoo, Excite, AltaVista, Go.com, and Dogpile.

On all of these, you will see a blank toward the top where you can type in a word or group of words that describe the information you want, and then a search button to the right that you can click. You’ll then see a list of links to Web pages that the search engine thinks pertain most closely to the words you typed; you can click on each link to see if the site has the information you want.

Some tips to make search engines work better for you:

=  most search engines will treat each word you type as a separate piece of information and return all Web sites that contain that word. For example, if you want to find information on the TV show “American Idol,” typing American Idol in your search blank might give you the show’s Web site . . . but it will also give you information about American Oil Co., baseball’s American League, perhaps a Bible verse about worshipping an idol, or information about the carving of an idol as a tropical art form. The way around this is to use quotes around the phrase you want: type “American Idol” in quotations and you will get Web sites that have both words in the order you specify (most often, sites about the TV show).

=  you can search for Web sites that deal with different topics by using the AND operator. Are you looking for a site that has the lyrics to the song “New York, New York?” Go to your search engine and type in:

“New York, New York” AND lyrics

to get the Web site you need.

=  use words that are as specific as possible. If you want information about Labrador retrievers, typing in “Labrador retriever” rather than “dog” will get you more information that’s better suited to what you want.

=  many search engine Web sites—Yahoo is a good example—have links on their main page to a great deal of general information. You can get the latest news/weather/sports, see items for sale, browse an electronic Yellow Pages, use people search functions, get zip/area codes, and much more.

=  there are also search engines that focus on more specific topics and give you just the Web sites dealing with those topics. These are called “specialty search engines” and there are several examples of how to find them. SearchEngineWatch.com gives you one example list, and NetMechanic.com provides a good definition of this type of search engine.

The Internet has a great deal of information—and finding it can be easy with the help of a few simple steps.

If you have questions about search engines or other Internet-related topics, please contact HunTel.net’s tech support at 402-533-5777 (Washington County and Omaha) or 1-888-491-9115 (toll-free statewide). You can also send an e-mail to techsupport@huntel.net.
 

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