Search Strategies

When first devising a search strategy, you should determine what it is that you are trying to do. Are you just browsing, looking for specific information, or trying to retrieve everything possible on a subject? Use a variety of tools like Yahoo!, the metasearch engine called Vivisimo, Google, or try using a specialized database. It was interesting to learn that some search engines automatically add the AND or the OR conjuction to the search. This could possibly change or skew the results. Sometimes the engines ignore words. These are called stop words. Google is one of the only search engines that recognizes stop words within quotation marks. Important things to consider in creating a search statement are to be specific, use nouns and objects as keywords, and put important terms first in the list. I definitely need to employ some of these methods in my searching attempts. I ALWAYS use Google to search. It is actually my home page. I need to try to broaden my searching horizons and attempt to try other methods. I may find that my results are more vast and informative.