SEARCHING WITH SEARCH ENGINES

MSVU Library Online Tutorials

What are search engines?• Online search tools:

• Google• Bing• Yahoo• Duck Duck Go

Images: Pixabay.com. “Google”. https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2015/09/14/04/19/google-939112_960_720.png; Wikimedia Commons. “Bing logo”. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Bing_logo_%282013%29.svg/2000px-Bing_logo_%282013%29.svg.png,

What will you find?• Results will be web pages – commercial, academic, or user-generated.

• Results will be ranked (ordered) based on many factors, like page views, link counts, best match, your location, and even your previous browsing data.

• Many search engines will also show advertisements in the list of results.

Pros• May tailor results to you based on

your browsing history, so you are more likely to find relevant and local information.

• Quick and easy access to information.

Cons• Must be very critical of results to

make sure they are reliable.

• The “best” results may not always be on the first page, depending on how results are ranked.

• Difficult to find scholarly sources through web searches.

Other tips• Natural language searching – use a full phrase.

• Most search engines also have an advanced search option, although the search tools are often limited.

• The options to refine results are harder to find and not as useful.

• Most web browsers (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) will have an Incognito or Private Browsing mode, which can be used to prevent your browsing history, location, and previous searches from influencing your results when using tools like Google.• Private Browsing does not save your search history locally on your computer, but

it often can still be accessed through other means, like the server or your IP address.

Searching using natural language

works well.Google shows some scholarly results first

for this search – these are likely

similar to results that would show on Google Scholar.

Many of these results are from

organizations and companies – be sure to carefully review any facts and evaluate the websites to make

sure you are getting credible

information.

Google also gives image, video, and news results for your search, which

may give other interesting information.

Bing shows ad results on this side bar and in the top

of the regular search results – watch for this to

make sure information is

reliable.

An “About Us” section on a website can help you to determine if

the organization is

credible.These “Related searches” may

contain other useful keywords to use to

find more information.