For best search results, follow these directions
By Martha Spizziri -- Modern Materials Handling, 3/1/1999
Last month we talked about search engines. Here are some techniques to help you get better search results.Most engines let you refine your search terms. You can find out how to do this by clicking a link that says 'Help,' 'Search Tips,' or something similar. Some tips:
c Most search engines will find any document that mentions any of the keywords you type in. So if you type bar code, a web page that includes the sentence "The dress code does not bar blue jeans'' could come up as a match.
c Often you can exclude such results by putting words in quotes. The search engine then treats the words as a phrase-so entering "bar code'' instead of bar code would eliminate results like the example above.
Last month I mentioned three "megasearch'' engines-www.dogpile.com, www.metacrawler.com, and www.copernic.com. These useful tools let you search several popular search engines-such as HotBot, Lycos, AltaVista, and Yahoo!-in one fell swoop, and see the results on one page.
There are differences among these tools. For instance, Dogpile shows results by search engine. MetaCrawler puts the best matches first, regardless of which search engine returned the results.
Copernic is a different animal. Instead of doing a search via a browser, you visit Copernic only once, to download a search program. The software looks for sites without the aid of a browser. Copernic lists the sites and you can double-click on one to launch your browser and view the site.
The beauty of Copernic is that it lets you save groups of search terms. That feature makes it a snap to look for the same kind of information regularly. The basic version of Copernic is free, and it's probably sufficient for most needs. Visit us online
Modern Materials Handling: www.mmh.com
ADC News & Solutions: www.adcnews.com
Manufacturing Marketplace: www.manufacturing.net
Have a comment, question, or opinion for the Internet Update? E-mail ms@cahners.com (or fax 617-558-4327).
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