The idea of a physical one world seemed to be a distant dream a few decades ago. But with advancement that we have seen in the field of science and technology has made sure that it does not stay a dream. While it might not be possible to have a real world with no boundaries in near future but it has certainly become possible in the form of the virtual world by the advent of internet. Internet and web have made it easy to communicate within seconds with people on other side of the world. So, if we think about it internet is a world with boundaries that allows people to connect, share information and retrieve information from its vast resources.
Libraries have been replaced by e-libraries. The people of the world have access to this wide knowledge base irrespective of their nationality, age, race, religion or ethnicity.
With changing trends of searching for information on web, came the concept of search engines. Consider a search engine to be like a catalog in a public library where you can search for book from all over the world.
It is better in the sense that the access for information is world wide, it keeps expanding and searching it is a matter of seconds.
But again, searching the web via search engines is the ‘in’ thing these days because it saves time and web engines are up to date with the latest technology and advancements in different subjects in the world.
One must learn the working of the search engine in order to effectively use it. It is true that the search engines have advance to high levels and can distinguish between real information and worthless information but since they don’t have a human brain and cannot read and understand human languages exactly, they can sometimes bring faulty information. To sift through the searches and find the one relevant to you is your task.
Search engines do not share the algorithm or their internal working and the rules they use to retrieve information but we can know enough about their main methods by practicing a bit.
Search engines use keywords written by user in their search and compare exact matches and the density at which they appear on a web page. The density measure varies from search engine to search engine. However, while searching make sure you use ‘plus’ operator instead of ‘and’ and try not to use prepositions, articles or helping verbs and search engines ignore that.
Use short, to the point and relevant keywords while searching and do not use long sentences. The chances will be that you will end up with variety of results and not so relevant ones as the search engines will use exact keywords for conducting search.
You will need to practice a bit before you can totally grasp the ways of searching web via search engines. Also, run your searches on more than one search engine against the same keywords to check which one contains the most relevant information for your query.
It is a pretty good chance that you’ve ended up with theories instead of facts, unless you are search for theories. Always conduct the same search on different search engines with same keywords to check the consistency of results. You can end up with incorrect information and we don’t want that to happen. Do we?
