Web+Search

Introduction
Nobody knows how many pages are on the Internet, but estimates range from several billion even up to one trillion. And clearly this is increasing every day. In order to find what we want on the web, it is important to be able to carry out effective searches.

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Advanced search criteria
Many Internet users type their search query into the search box, sit back and then wonder why they don't get the correct answer.

Most search engines allow more advanced criteria to be entered. These can be entered into form fields, or using boolean terms as per the following table



Task 1
Think up 3 complex questions which might require an advanced search to get the answer easily. Swap your questions with a partner. Try and answer their questions using an advanced search form in your chosen search engine

Meta Search Engines
A meta search engine is a search engine which indexes the results from several search engines and provides the results in a single list. For example, the meta search engine Dogpile indexes results from Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.

Task 2
Here is a list of some meta search engines (there are others if you search for them). [|Dogpile] [|Metacrawler] [|Monstercrawler] [|9Meta] [|ixQuick] [|WebFetch]

Copy and complete this table for 3 meta search engines



Directory Search Engines
A directory search engine organises it's content in a hierarchical structure. A good example of this is [|Yahoo Directory].

Task 3
Try searching for something of interest (favourite film / band / sports team etc) using Yahoo Directory (a) Is it quicker or slower to search with a directory search engine compared to a meta search engine like Google (b) Can you think of any advantages of using a directory search engine over a meta search engine?