Web Searching: Here Are My Tips - What Works Best for You?

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Knowing how to effectively search the Web can increase our productivity at work. Here is what I have learned about Web searching. What are the search strategies that you have found most useful?

My Tips for Effective Web Searches

Do You Have a Search Tip to Share With Us?

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My Tips for Effective Web Searches

One way to increase productivity and effectiveness at work is to choose a good search engine and know how to skillfully use it. If you think all search engines are about the same, try running the same search on different ones. I have had wildly different results from various search engines.

Why? The various search engine services basically use the same process of going through the Web to digitally copy billions of web pages and place them in their databases. Yet, they all have developed different software to pick through this mountain of data, and that can affect your search results.

My favorite search engine is Google.com. It is particularly useful for me, as a blind computer user. Its home page is uncluttered with fewer than 15 links. It also searches PDF documents and offers me the choice of viewing a document in PDF or in HTML format. In so doing, it avoids the messy accessibility issues involved in PDF documents and, at the same time, delivers something useful.

Google.com is also accurate and relevant. I have nearly always found the information or document I'm seeking in the first 20 listings. That's hardly the case for Hotbot, Excite, and some of the other search engines. I can also search Google.com for Usenet postings and retrieve the collective wisdom of millions of computer users. We are rarely the first to encounter a problem or seek more information about a topic. Searching Usenet often yields answers to my questions or the bits of knowledge I seek.

In addition to choosing a good search engine, it is important to be able to find it easily. I have Google.com set as my start page, so it is the first thing that opens when I launch Internet Explorer. I can also easily retrieve it during a session by pressing the alt and home keys together. You can configure the default start page in the general tab from the options selection in the tools menu for Internet Explorer.

Once you have chosen a search engine and you can easily find it when you open your browser, your next step is to build your search skills. Spend some time reading the help links on your search engine. You'll find many tips there that are really useful. I am continually surprised that few people know that they can search for a group of words, such as "Social Security," by putting quotation marks around them. In this example, both words are quite common and neither word is unique enough to ensure that unrelated pages will be excluded. The phrase can be combined with other words in the same search. Another technique is to place the ampersand sign (the shift of the seven key) between words to find pages that contain both words or phrases. These tips -- and a whole lot more -- can be learned for a small investment of just a couple of hours of time in learning common search techniques.

One of the best sites I have found about using search engines is Search Engine Watch. On this site, an excellent page entitled Web Searching Tips, describes the basics of web searching and offers much information about conducting effective web searches.

Finally, sometimes finding the information desired may not depend so much on good strategies for Web searching but locating (and filing them for later reference) good resources online and offline for the information you want in your area of interest. Instead of searching for organizations that assist families of children with disabilities who have education issues, for instance, I rely on a nifty web directory with lots of links and information that a disability organization in Chicago (where I live and work) has put together. While I'm at my job, it's more efficient for me to go to this site and find these resources, as I did last week, than it is to conduct a Web search.

Similarly, if you are interested in the latest news about the disability community, you can do endless web searches looking for such information or just go to a site or subscribe to a service that already has this information, such as DisabilityWebGuide.com. You can also spend hours searching for a journal paper or find it effortlessly (sometimes for a price) on Nexus. Here's another example: Westlaw.com may have an accessible version of a court decision you are seeking.

Employing a wide set of strategies will ensure the bounty of the World Wide Web is right on your desktop -- and that you will have access to the information that is available to your sighted colleagues.

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Do You Have a Search Tip to Share With Us?

What are the search strategies that you have found most useful? Is there a killer technique that all of us should know about? Please offer your experiences in getting good search results. Use the "Share your opinions with eSight Careers Network" tool below.

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