ACADEMIC SEARCH TECHNIQUES

As the largest interconnection of computers and computer networks, the World Wide Web
makes information widely accessible, but information integrity and management remain key issues
for individuals and firms using this platform. The Internet can provide a wealth of information, but
the credibility and accuracy depend entirely on the source, and finding credible information can be
time-consuming, requiring hours of sorting through largely irrelevant sites. These difficulties often
arise because search engines -while widely used – are often not wisely used. For many people,
arriving at the information desired, rather than at thousands of irrelevant hyperlinks, remains more
an art form than a science.
The computers are just a tool which helps you to get the information from the net. It cannot
think for you. It cannot impart knowledge to you. In this situation, Search Engines are like the
index in the back of a book. It helps you to search for specific words and topics.
Some of the examples of search engines are: Google, Alta Vista, Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek etc.

GOOGLE
 Google is a full-text search engine, which uses computerized "spiders" to index millions,
sometimes billions, of pages, allowing for much narrower searches than searchable subject
index, which searches only the titles and descriptions of sites, and doesn't search individual
pages
 Google is case-insensitive. If you search for Three, tHRee, THREE, or even THREE, you
get the same results.
 Singular is different from plural. Searches for apple and apples turn up different pages
 The order of words matters. Google considers the first word most important, the second
word next, and so on.
 Google ignores most little words, including include "I," "where," "how," "the," "of," "an,"
"for," "from," "how," 'it," "in," and "is,”. Google ignores most punctuation, except
apostrophes, hyphens, and quote marks
 Google returns pages that match your search terms exactly
 Google search word limit is 32
Some of the academic search techniques in the context of Google search engine are as follows.
1. Phrase Searches
 Enter key words search techniques. Google will find matches where the keywords appear
anywhere on the page
 If you want Google to find you matches where the keywords appear together as a phrase,
surround them with quotes, like this “search techniques”.
2. Basic Boolean
 Google's Boolean default is AND, which means that if you enter query words without
modifiers, Google will search for all your query words
 If you prefer to specify that any one word or phrase is acceptable, put an OR (in capital
letter), lower case or won’t work correctly. For example: enter Yahoo OR Google.
 A computer programming character | can work like OR (e.g. Yahoo | Google)
 If you want to search for a particular term along with two or more other terms, group the
other terms within parentheses, like so “search techniques” (Yahoo OR Google).
3. Negation
 If you want to specify that a query item must not appear in your results, prep end a (minus
sign or dash): “search techniques” –Google. This will search the pages that contain “search
techniques”, but not the word Google
 Note that the symbol must appear directly before the word or phrase that you don't want. If
there's space between, as in the following query, it won't work as expected “search
techniques” – Google
4. Explicit Inclusion
 Google will search for all the keywords and phrases that you specify, however, there are
certain words that Google will ignore because they are considered too common to be of any
use in the search (e.g. “a”, “the”, “of”, etc.)
 You can force Google to take a stop word into account by prep ending a + (plus) character,
as in +the “search techniques”.

5. Synonyms
 The Google synonym operator, the ~ (tilde) character, prep ended to any number of
keywords in your query, asks Google to include not only exact matches, but also what it
thinks are synonyms for each of the keywords. Searching for: ~ape turns up results for
monkey, gorilla, chimpanzee, and others (both singular and plural forms) of the ape or
related family, as if you'd searched for: monkey gorilla chimpanzee (Synonyms are bolded
along with exact keyword matches on the results page, so they're easy to spot)
6. Number Range
 The number range operator, .. (two periods), looks for results that fall inside your specified
numeric range (e.g. digital camera 3..5 megapixel $800..$1000)
 You can also use the number range syntax with just one number, making it the minimum or
maximum of your query (e.g. digital camera ..5 megapixel $800..)
7. Simple Searching and Feeling Lucky
 The I'm Feeling Lucky™ button is a thing of beauty. Rather than giving you a list of search
results from which to choose, you're whisked away to what Google believes is the most
relevant page given your search (i.e., the first result in the list). Entering Washington Post
and clicking the I'm Feeling Lucky button takes you directly to
http://www.washingtonpost.com.
Searching Within Your Results help you narrow down your results to find the really
relevant pages within your results pages