Searching the Web
There are literally hundreds of million web pages on the World Wide Web. How can you find what you are looking for without looking forever? Use a search engine. A search engine is a huge directory of web pages. While each search engine works in a slightly different manner, essentially they allow you to type a topic or search phrase and they will return a list of web sites that match your criteria. However, this is not an exact science. Very often you can find more "garbage" than useful information. Hopefully, this brief tutorial will help you get started.
Basics:
Single-click on the Internet: You only need to single-click on a link on the Internet. In Windows and Mac OS (operating system), you need to double-click on an icon to run a program or open a document. The Web was setup such that you don’t need to do this. By double-clicking on the Web you could possibly open a page you didn’t want.
What does WWW.DOT.COM mean? What this string of characters mean confuses a lot of people. It is called a URL...Universal Resource Locator. The URL is a name given to the numeric address that the Internet actually uses to identify a computer’s location (which looks like 192.168.36.2) The WWW stands for the name of the machine which stores the web pages. The DOT is the name of the location. (I.e. We are MOSESBROWN) The .COM is loosely designed to tell you what type of web site it is.
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.COM |
Commercial Site (www.cnn.com) |
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.ORG |
Non- Profit (www.mosesbrown.org) |
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.NET |
Network Provider (www.uu.net) |
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.GOV |
Governmental (www.whitehouse.gov) |
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.MIL |
Military (www.army.mil) |
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.UK |
Foreign Site (www.bbc.co.uk) |
The New York Times is an excellent place to start a search. "Navigator is the home page used by the newsroom of The New York Times for forays into the Web. Its primary intent was to give reporters and editors new to the Web a solid starting point for a wide range of journalistic functions without forcing all of them to spend time wandering around blindly to find a useful set of links of their own. Its secondary purpose was to show people that there's a lot of fun and useful stuff going on out there." It is divided into various sections to help you narrow your search. I recommend that you bookmark this page for easy reference. Click on the link above to visit this site.
Search Engines:
The are literally hundreds of search engines out there. Here are three of the most popular.
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Learn the basics of how Google search works. |
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A quick look at the many elements of Google's results pages. |
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Phrase search, search by category, and other advanced search features are explained. |
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Information on SafeSearch filtering, International Google, and other display options. |
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What are "cached" pages and "I'm Feeling Lucky"? These features and others explained. |
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