Searching the Internet for a specific person, page, or tightly defined topic

If you are looking for a tightly defined topic then a search engine such as Google, Teoma, or AltaVista is probably your best choice. Tightly defined searches often have a specific person, web page, location, corporation or even web page as their goal. Examples of a tight topic include:

• United States Census,
• Snopes urban legends (for the Snopes' urban legends site),
• "Eileen H. Kramer",
• New York State Chemistry Regents.

For searches where the order of the words makes sense in only one direction, enclose your search phrase in "quotes." This binds it so that the search engine reads it in only one direction instead of plucking words randomly from it.

Google
Considered the biggest and best search engine and also the most intuitive to use. Remember to bind proper names and other phrases in "quotes."

Teoma
This is the search engine behind Askjeeves.com but without the large ugly stripe and pop-up and pop-under advertisements. While it uses different software, Teoma's initial interface is very similar to Google's, with which many students are comfortable. Teoma is an especially good choice for those who rely on AskJeeves.

AltaVista
An older search engine that uses Overture for its software. AltaVista sometimes picks up pages that Google and Teoma miss. It also offers the most advanced Boolean searching of any engine.

For more information on search engines, please see Search Engines and Directories on Parade (from CSU) or the Search Engine Showdown (From Greg Notess).

Back to Searching for and Evaluating Internet Sources.

EHK -- January 2005