Search engines

There are many search engines available - names like Google, Yahoo! and Alta Vista are familiar to Internet users all over the world.

They work by taking a word or phrase that you give, using it to select sites that contain it somewhere, and presenting you with a list of them.  You work through the list choosing what you wish to view.

It sounds simple and it is but, with billions of sites, it can still be overwhelming.  Fortunately there are a range of techniques which can narrow your searching further. Which search engine you choose can affect the results of your search.

Firstly, remember that the search engines are not giving you "everything on the 'net".  They only sift through a list of sites that they have collected.  Many are suggested to them by the site owner, and some sites may have paid the search engines to feature them more prominently.

The world's most popular search engine, Google, arranges your results strictly according to how major your search term(s) appear in it, while noting whether a site is a paid advertiser.

Yahoo! has a directory with preset categories that can help you focus your search.  For instance, from the Society and Culture category, you go into the Social Organizations category, and then to Freemasonry.

Many search engines allow you to limit the hit list to just Australian or New Zealand sites (or the whole world if you wish), which can be very useful, given the dominance of (for instance) US sites on any general list.

Mooter and Kartoo approach the search results differently, giving you groups of results linked by common ideas, rather than lists.

Most of the engines also offer an advanced searching page which enables you to specify certain elements which must (or must not) appear - things such as particular domain names, or words in a title, or places, or dates.

All the engines have Help pages or links which give you advice on how to use the features they offer.

The next step is expressing your search in a way that ensures you get more useful material. This page gives some advice.

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These pages are designed by David Beagley for the Hall Board of the Bendigo Masonic Centre.
Responsibility for, and copyright of, content (unless otherwise noted) are his and his alone.

Last updated November 2005