| SEARCH THE INTERNET |
Out of all the things you can do with the internet Searching The Internet will be your number one
activity, whether you like it or not! The internet revolves around searching for something. Knowledge,
Music, Goods, Services and so on.
To search for something on the internet you first need to know the website address of a Search Engine
website - A Search Engine website is basically a website with a huge database built-in to it that
compares the Keywords/Phrases you type into its SEARCH Edit Box with those keywords/phrases it has
associated to certain/relevant webpages. Webpages it has searched for and keyword/phrase catalogued
previously. The website address of each catalogued webpage containing your keywords/phrases is then
displayed as a hypertext link (website address link). The four main Search Engine websites are Google
(www.google.com), Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), Windows Live Search (www.live.com) and Ask (www.ask.com).
This does not mean they are the best, just the most popular. There are other search engine websites
out there.
Once you have decided which search engine website you want to use type its website address into internet
explorer's Address Bar edit box and then press the ENTER keyboard key, or click on the GO (blue arrow)
button, to continue.
When the search engine website appears it will be displaying an empty SEARCH Edit Box, in preparation
for the Keywords or Phrases you will type into it in order to conduct a search. If you type the global
(.com) website address for your search engine website (i.e www.google.com) you will probably be
redirected, automatically, to the local website address (i.e www.google.co.uk). This is normal. It just
means your chosen search engine website prefers to use its local server/database to find results for
your keywords/phrases as opposed to using its global server/database. This is so that you get search
results that are more country and/or language relevant to your keywords/phrases. For example. You may
still get foreign search results (i.e French results) but the ratio should be something like 90%
English and 10% Foreign in that scenario. It all depends on what you are searching for. Searching for
a Turkish Rug (carpet) for example would almost certainly display search results with Turkish website
links and/or in the Turkish language.
If you want to narrow down your search, to be even more local, you can click on the PAGES FROM radio
(circle) button. In this example on the PAGES FROM THE UK. This means the search engine website will
preference UK Based websites first, whenever possible, before foreign or global websites (THE WEB).
For you this would mean searching for Second-Hand Cars for example would display results in English
with UK Car Company/Dealer websites first. You can click between the global (THE WEB) and local
(PAGES FROM THE UK) buttons at any time, without re-typing your keywords/phrases, because once you
click on the SEARCH button again the search engine website will simply search for your keywords/phrases
again in the relevant mode (global or local). Saying all this, there is not a lot of difference between
global and local (i.e the two databases should have stored more or less the same UK website links
anyway). Therefore, only use the local setting (PAGES FROM THE UK) when you feel the global setting
(THE WEB) is giving out too many irrelevant results, not narrow enough results and so on.
In this next example I will use the global setting to search for cheap flights to rome. Tips: Unless
needed, always use lowercase as the bulk of website content (text, headings, etc) is in lowercase. Google
can match exact phrases according to case-sensitivity. And always press the ENTER keyboard key after
typing your keyword(s)/phrase(s) into the SEARCH edit box, instead of clicking on the SEARCH button,
otherwise Google complains with a "Save time by hitting the return key instead of clicking on search"
message. So get into the habit of clicking inside the edit box and pressing ENTER.
Before going any further with examples I will now break down the results webpage so that you know what you are looking at. The first thing to remember is that each results webpage consists of website links and descriptions belonging to websites that have mentioned your keyword(s) and/or phrase(s). Whether or not you find the contents of those websites relevant is another story and part of Searching (Learning) The Internet. For example. You might come across what appears to be a fantastic website link, based mainly on its description, only to find the content of that website to be irrelevant after clicking on its website link.
Sponsored Links
Sponsored Links come in two flavours. Paid-For and Advertise-Per-Click. Meaning. They are normally
sponsored by commercial companies, organisations and so on. In this example the sponsored links with
a pink background are Paid-For links (ThomsonFly, EasyJet and BritishAirways). The sponsored links to
the right of them (white background) are Advertise-Per-Click links, which means when you click on one
the Advertiser has to pay the search engine company some money. If the advertiser pays £1 per click
for example they are hoping you will buy their product/service. Normal Links (see below) are listed
by merit. The more popular they become the higher their listing.
If you know the company you want to deal with (i.e. British Airways), and they are listed of course,
you may prefer to click on their Paid-For sponsored link straight away to save valuable search time
for example. On the other hand. If you have been looking through the normal links for a while, and the
Paid-For sponsored links are irrelevant to you, you may want to consider the Advertise-Per-Click sponsored
links. They can be a good alternative to your normal way of thinking/searching.
Text Link
The blue Text Link, which is explained in the Internet Links section, is the actual hypertext link (webpage/website address link) to the webpage or website (home webpage) mentioned in the Green Text (see below). In this example clicking on the blue Text Link would take you to the index (home) webpage that lives inside the sub-sub-folder called rome, because the Green Text shows the hypertext link to be www.cheapflights.co.uk/flights/rome/. The search engine normally creates the title for the blue Text Link using the title of the actual webpage. I.e. Cheap Flights to Rome, Italy - Rome flght deals.
Description
Although the title of each blue Text Link (hypertext link) is important, it is more important to read
the Description underneath the blue Text Link first. A description can tell you a little about the
website's content and/or pick up on the keyword(s)/phrase(s) you entered into the SEARCH edit box. The
description is normally the deciding factor on whether or not to click on the blue Text Link.
Although the description is created by the Search Engine website it is based on the content of the
website in question. It is normally taken from the beginning of the index (home) webpage, which means
if the website author is aware of this they can manipulate their Introduction to benefit their
description. In other words. They could make their website sound better than it really is. On the
other hand, if they are un-aware they will also be un-aware that their website description is not as
good as it could be. This is something else to take into consideration when deciding whether or not to
click on the blue Text Link.
The reason I point out the considerations is because over time, when you have done a lot of searching,
you begin to realise how much time is wasted clicking on blue Text Links because the description sounds
too good to be true! For example. If you are looking for some Free Software (i.e. Free Audio Converter)
the description might be Free Download, which you misinterpret as Free Software. This could be because
of the way the author wrote the description or because of the way the search engine website created
the description (i.e. it twisted the wording....because it is a computer that does not fully understand
English). Therefore. When you click on the blue Text Link you are disappointed to see the £ (or $) sign
next to the advertised Free Software, because the software is actually Free-To-Download/Free-To-Try but
not Free-To-Use (i.e. you must pay to use it without restrictions).
Green Text
The green text, which is text only and not a hypertext link (webpage/website address link), is showing you the webpage or website (home webpage) you will be taken to when you click on the blue Text Link (above). Or put another way, it is showing you the hypertext link (webpage/website address link) behind the blue Text Link so that you do not click on a blue Text Link blindly. The hypertext link itself, www.cheapflights.co.uk/flights/rome/, can be broken up into its relevant folders. For example. www.cheapflights.co.uk/ is the main folder of the website, flights is a sub-folder inside the main folder and rome is a sub-folder inside the flights sub-folder (or a sub-sub-folder of the main folder). Therefore the forward slash after rome is the same as rome/index.htm (or rome/index.html) - see the Web Terminology section for more information.
Cached Link
The Cached (pronounced: Cashed) link is very important and yet very unused, even though it can be a
life-saver. Imagine you have been searching for hours looking for a specific piece of information when
up comes a blue Text Link with a Description that makes you say with frustration/impatience "At last!",
because the description describes exactly what you are looking for. All you need to do is click on the
blue Text Link. Now imagine that when you click on that blue Text Link your web browser (i.e. Internet
Explorer) produces an error message saying "Page Could Not Be Displayed", because the owner of the
website is no longer paying for the website to be hosted (displayed). You would probably feel like
crying!
After crying and cursing you would probably abandon the search! And if only you knew about the Cached
link before. A search engine website stores a copy of a website for a limited period. That means, even
if a website is no longer hosted (live on the internet), you can click on the Cached link to see a copy
of the webpage you thought did not exist. So with the above scenario the Cached link could be your
life-saver, especially if what you are looking for is rare information.
Act quickly! If a website has been off the internet (unhosted) for a while the search engine website
might of deleted its copy of that website. Or the copy might be too old. Meaning, the description may
suggest "Next week we offer 50% discount" but that offer never happened because the website closed down
before next week. Therefore the search engine website might only have a copy of this week's offer-intro
webpage and not next week's actual-offer webpage.
Similar Pages Link
Clicking on the Similar Pages link tells the search engine website you want to find similar websites based on the keyword(s)/phrase(s) you have entered into the SEARCH edit box and the title of the blue Text Link. For example. Clicking on the Similar Pages link for Cheap Flights to Rome, Italy - Rome flght deals will give you a new results webpage with links relating to Cheap Flights, Italy, Airports and so on. Behind the scenes a search engine website will normally look for Related websites (websites that have a similar title/theme and/or websites that are actually linked to the website with the blue Text Link). Therefore, Similar Pages can reduce the amount of search engine result webpages dramatically - From 50 result webpages down to 3 in some instances.
Search Results
The Results 1 - 10 of about 399,000 part of the search means the search engine website is
currently displaying blue Text Links 1 to 10 of about 399,000 blue Text Links. This is because the
search engine website is set to display only 10 blue Text Links per results webpage. So it divides
the 399,000 blue Text Links into 10, which means there will be approximately 39,900 blue Text Links
to go through!!
Fortunately the search engine website is quite clever and can detect similar links, which it leaves
out of its search results. This gives a more accurate result of (unique) blue Text Links. In this
example the 399,000 blue Text Links went right down to 502 (unique) blue Text Links, which meant only
51 results webpages to go through!!
To get from one results webpage to another simply click on one of the page numbers at the bottom of the current results webpage. Or click on the PREVIOUS button, or NEXT button, if the search engine website has one.
| KEYWORDS |
Now that you know what you are looking at on the results webpage the next thing for you to do, before
you actually begin searching the internet, is to learn how to make your searches faster/better by
using the correct Keyword(s)/Phrase(s).
Before a search engine website begins to search its Database Of Webpages for your keywords/phrase(s) it
seperates them into individual keywords. For example. If your phrase is where can i buy red wine in france?
the search engine website will seperate that phrase into the following keywords before searching its
Database Of Webpages: where, can, i, buy, red, wine, in
and france. As soon as you click on the SEARCH button you might expect the search engine website
to find websites (blue Text Links) with titles such as "Buy Red Wine in Bordeaux" and "If you turn left
at the lights, past the post office....", because you have asked the question Where? If you asked a
Human the same question you would expect the answers to be "In Bordeaux" and "Turn left at the lights,
past the post office....look for a shop called Yoingco Wines". Unfortunately, a Seach Engine website
(Computer) does not think/answer in the same way as a Human and can only think in Broken English (or
whatever your language is).
The websites (blue Text Links) returned from the search phrase where can i buy red wine in france?,
on results webpage one of Google, are to do with Wine Making, Supermarkets Selling Wine, Wine Advice
and so on. Yet none of them answered my question directly of Where? and more precisely Where In France?
This is because the keyword where was not as strong or highly ranked as Buy and Wine. Hence why
the results were to do with Wine Sellers and the buying of wine in general. Unfortunately this scenario
happens frequently whereby you do not quite get what you were looking for.
Over time you begin to realize it pays to use two or more phrases and/or use broken Engligh by cutting
out the in-between keywords such as In, Of The, At and so on. If you look at the results for
cheap flights to rome you will notice Google does not rate in very highly. And the same
applies for where can i buy red wine in france?. where, in and ? are not
highly rated. A better phrase for the latter would be french wineries + french wine regions for
example. You could even add French Wine Sellers just to see what results you get. As you can see from
the results webpage below, I was offered more precise links to do with Where In France? when I was more
precise with my phrase. Meaning. I could now follow the blue Text Link titled
Visiting the French Wine Regions - Europe for Visitors for example to get a better idea of the
Wine Regions.
Remember. Clicking on a blue Text Link is only the beginning of the trail. Like all searches, you have
a start point (start looking) and an end point (found it)....hopefully!! Therefore, clicking on the
Visiting the French Wine Regions - Europe for Visitors link might only give me info on Wine Regions
but then again it might give me one or more useful links to Free Wine Tasting and/or Wine Sellers. I
will not know until I start searching. In many scenarios you may end up searching, with different keywords/phrases,
over a period of one day, one week, one month or whatever and find nothing or something. In other words.
The information is usually out there but it may not be at your finger tips that quickly. Hard work,
Time and Thought is needed.....and a clean mouth (for those days when you start cursing that useless
******* stupid search engine website!).
Below is a list of some useful keywords to try. Most of them help me out on a weekly basis.
Freeware
When searching for free software (i.e. free audio converters) you normally end up with results that
contain the word FREE, either in the title of the blue Text Link or in the description, which the
website owner has probably put there to entice you to click on their blue Text Link. However. When you
visit their website, by clicking on their blue Text Link, do not be surprised if you find the free
software is in fact Free-To-Download and/or Free-To-Try software only. This happens all the time, to
many people's frustration. It is becoming more and more difficult to find 100% Free-To-Use software
these days, especially quality software.
Using the keyword freeware at the beginning of your phrase can produce better search results.
This is because in software terminology (jargon) the word Freeware means totally free-to-use, basically.
If you see the word Shareware for example it means you must pay the software author(s) a Fee for using
their software. Shareware software is normally free-to-use for a limited period of time, before you have
to pay the Shareware Fee, and may also be limited in terms of its features/functionality. Freeware on
the other hand is totally free-to-use but may not be as good as its shareware equivalent, but then
again some freeware is of a commercial quality. If you were looking for some shareware software then
obviously you could put Shareware, instead of Freeware, at the beginning of your search phrase. Another
keyword to use is open source which is better than freeware but is in many cases for the
programmer. Example: freeware audio converters or open source audio converters.
Download
Adding the keyword download to the end of your phrase normally gives results whereby the blue
Text Link has a direct hypertext link (webpage address) to the software you are searching for. For
example. If you are searching for "windows media player" your search results will be about the many
different versions of the Microsoft Media Player (i.e. Windows Media Player 9, Windows Media Player 10
and Windows Media Player 11), whereas searching for "windows media player 11" gives search results
more specific to Windows Media Player 11. However. If you search for windows media player 11 download
many of the search results will be based on the many different websites that contain a download link
to Window Media Player 11.
You should always download Microsoft's software (i.e. Windows Media Player 11) from a Microsoft
(www.microsft.com) download link before entertaining another website's download link for that software.
This is because the other websites might not be linking directly to the Microsoft webpage
(i.e. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/11/default.aspx) but instead linking to
their own Microsoft webpage (i.e. http://www.wmp.com/download/wmp.html) which they may not have
permission to do, especially if they are storing the actual Microsoft software on their website.
Watch out for the bad people who put a bogus link on their webpage, usually titled DOWNLOAD NOW,
that make you think from their own software description that you will be downloading some original
software (i.e. Windows Media Player 11) when in fact you could be downloading a Virus Infected file
from their website.
ALWAYS USE THE ORIGINAL SOFTWARE AUTHOR'S WEBSITE WHENEVER POSSIBLE. If the original software author's
website is mentioning, or giving, a software download link that is from another website you should be
able to trust that other website. When a software author mentions, gives and/or recommends another
website to download their software from it is called a Mirror Website or Alternative Download.
Site:
site: is a keyword used before a website's domain name (i.e. site:www.yoingco.com). Its search results give a blue Text Link for each webpage that is stored on the website you are searching, which makes site: very useful for those occasions where you cannot remember where you saw something from. For example. You can remember going to www.yoingco.com and reading an interesting article! about Security but cannot remember the name of the webpage or article nor its hypertext link (webpage address). Using the search results from site:www.yoingco.com you could then look at the hypertext links (Green Text), titles of the blue Text Links and/or Descriptions of those search results to jog your memory. Hopefully, you would then find the interesting article you was reading before. site: basically gives you an index of a website's webpage links.
Links:
links: is a keyword used before a website's domain name (i.e. links: www.yoingco.com). Its
search results give a blue Text Link for each website that is linking directly to the website you are
searching. For example, links: wwww.yoingco.com shows you which websites have a direct link to
www.yoingco.com. Although direct links can be found anywhere (i.e. mentioned by any website or
individual) they are usually found in Forums (Questions and Answers websites) as recommended websites,
disappointing websites, author advertisements and so on.
links: is very useful if you have had a bad experience with a company for example. You could find the
links for that company, to see where else they advertise their bad deeds, and then inform each linked
website of that bad company's ways. You could also use links: to investigate a company before buying
something from them for example. If you read the comments on the forums, for example, where a company's
website link is mentioned you can get an idea of that company's policies/reputation for example.
Remember. People use forums a lot and will always write good/bad comments on them when a company is
good/bad.
Town/City
This one may seem obvious after a while but to a beginner who does not know..... When searching for a service or business in your area do not assume the search engine website knows where you are at the present time. It is a search engine not a sat-nav! Meaning. If you are looking for a Plumber in your area do not search for "plumbers" only. You must put your town/city into the phrase, such as plumbers in london or plumbers in camberwell, london. "Plumbers" only will give you worldwide plumbers. If you want to be even more specific you can use the first part of your postcode. plumbers in SE5. Or if you want to be general but not worldwide you can put plumbers in south london for example.
Minus, Plus and Double Quotes
The - symbol can be used to eliminate certain searched keywords. For example. If you are looking for
bass guitar and your search results always contain bass player and bass guitar courses as well you can
use the - symbol to eliminate bass player and bass guitar courses results. Example: bass guitar -player -courses.
Another use is when using names. If you are searching for washington dc but keep getting george washington
in your results you can use: washington dc -george.
The + symbol seperates phrases from one another. Example: red wine + wine retailers. This makes
sure red wine and wine retailers are searched for, even though the search engine website will also
split them into keywords and look for red, wine and retailers as well.
If you want to make sure that something is searched for in whole, use double quotes. Example: "red wine"
or "red wine" + "wine retailers". Double quotes come in handy when you are looking for a phrase
in a song lyric or a quote from a speech and so on. For example. Imagine you know the words to a song
but cannot remember who sang it. You would search for the lyrics you remember (i.e. "ice ice baby")
and get the result for the artist (i.e. vanilla ice).
lyrics:
If you need to know the lyrics for a piece of music you can use the lyrics: keyword. Example: lyrics: ice ice baby.
Dictionary: and Definition:
If you need to know the meaning or definition of a word you can use the dictionary: keyword or definition: keyword (they are roughly the same). Example: dictionary: coke or definition: coke.
Bad Words = Bad Websites
Sometimes you will use an innocent word like Uniform or Naked in your searches without realizing this invokes Adult Material websites to be listed amongst the search results. For example. You may be searching for a Uniform (i.e. Nurses Uniform) because you are a nurse but the search engine might think otherwise. The same goes for the BBC's cookery programme called Naked Chef, by Jamie Oliver. Searching for Naked Chef lists Jamie Oliver/Naked Chef for many search results (many webpages) but if you go past page 20 for example the search results tend to list more specific results relating to the words Naked and Chef.....Jamie Oliver is then abandoned!
| MORE SEARCH OPTIONS |
If you want a more specfic/narrow search you should look for a search engine's ADVANCED SEARCH or NARROW SEARCH option, if they have one, that is usually close by - Near the SEARCH button for example. In this example I am using Google's ADVANCED SEARCH link to narrow my search for Jobs In London. At the moment it has 1,270,000 search results.
To begin an advanced search first type a word/phrase into the SEARCH Edit Box as normal and then look to the right of the SEARCH button for a link called ADVANCED SEARCH. When you have located it, click on it (Fig 1.7 above) to go to the advanced search webpage.
The advanced search webpage allows you to really strip down your search. In this example I have stated
that I only want English results (all other languages will not be included in the advanced search). I
have also stated that I would like to search through the www.gumtree.com website only. And finally. I
have stated that I only want results from the last 24 Hours - This is good as it disregards older
results (older job postings in this case). If I wanted to I could of switched on SAFE SEARCH, which
tries to avoid Adult Material content for example, but in this case I know www.gumtree.com to be okay.
Therefore I clicked on the ADVANCED SEARCH button (above).
The advanced search has stripped down the search to specifically look at www.gumtree.com, in English,
for the last 24 Hours. The results are down to 2,420 (Fig 1.9 below) compared to a search for the
Past Week of 4,730 (Fig 1.10 below). This means by searching for 24 Hours I have narrowed the search.
Obviously you would actually go to www.gumtree.com to look for a job. The example here is how to do an
advanced search. If I did not put www.gumtree.com into the equation jobs in london would still
be of use because it would of shown me different Job Agencies and/or different Job Websites, therefore
I mght of found a job agency or job website I never knew existed before.
At the end of the day, month or year! you should eventually find what you are looking for. "Momma's secret recipe" is no secret anymore. Those who say "If I tell you that I will be out of a job" are probably redundant anyway! because their knowledge is on the internet already. The internet covers a wealth of information and you know what they say.....Information IS Power.
Microsoft product screen shot(s) reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation. As stated here by the Microsoft Corporation.
All HTM files in the yoingco.com folder and its sub-folders are (c) John White, August 3rd 2005 - 2008. All Rights Reserved. FREE Vista Helpline: Contact John