Welcome To Lepak.Com

This is a chapter from my book Instant Genius: Internet Research. If you are curious to find out more about my work, check out my Writing Credits.

My series Instant Genius! Information Technology Without The Technical Jargon that is published by Pelanduk is unfortunately out of print. I am considering a compilation and new publication.

To find relevant information online quickly, you need to understand simple search notation and the use of Boolean logic. Don't panic! Boolean logic is really, really easy.

Every search engine works on similar (but not identical) principles. In general this works as follows:

Let's say you're looking for information about Siamese cats. Although Siamese should start with a capital letter, be careful using the upper and lower case. When you use lowercase text, many search engines will return links to pages including either uppercase or lowercase results. When you use uppercase text however, the search service may think you are looking for a proper noun and will only return links to pages with the term in uppercase results.

Stick to the general lower case, and enter the keywords siamese cat, like this:

Let's face it, it's a bit clumsy and you're bound to have zillions of results returned.You can narrow these down by telling the programme you only want to see lists of resources that contain both words.You do this by putting a + in front of each word,

Now the search engine will only return links to documents with both keywords. These keywords may be next to each other, or sentences apart.If you like, you can search for the phrase,

This will ensure the search engine returns a list of links to pages that include this phrase exactly as shown.In this case, this may not be the best option. Siamese cat lovers may use the phrase, however, it is also likely that entire pages will simply refer to "Siamese", with the word "cat" being understood.

Suppose that many of the resources you visit are just adverts with no other information.You note that most of these contain the phrase "for sale". There's good news: you can tell the programme you want all the resources with siamese and cat but none with the phrase "for sale" by entering this:

The minus sign means "don't include". The use of inverted commas tells the programme to look for an exact phrase.

If what you have read about the habits of Siamese cats interests you so much that you want to adopt one,
however, search for +siamese +cat +"for sale".

For more information about searching with keywords go to http://www.lepak.com and click on the image of this book.

Because of some development history which we won't go into here, there is a way that canny researchers can make most search facilities do some really clever searches. To do this, you need to use Boolean Logic. This is a special method of linking keywords with Boolean Logic words AND, OR, AND NOT or NEAR.

AND - Finds only documents containing all of the specified words or phrases.

NEAR - Finds documents containing specified keywords placed near to each other on the page.

Suppose you want to read up on Internet security. Using the keywords internet and security together with Boolean logic search for:

to find resources with both these words. The search engine returns results that show there are thousands of resources that have both these words. You can check each one and you will always find both these words listed.

A closer look at the first results shows that the search engine sometimes puts in one or two Paid Placements at the top of the search results page. Occasionally these are useful. Read the write-up but be prepared to skip to the next result returned.

Looking for pages with both these words hasn't given us the results we were looking for.Why not? Because we are not really looking for two separate words, we are looking for a phrase.

Luckily, AltaVista allows us to search for phrases. Put in "internet security" like this:

Now we have a fewer number of links to investigate, however, from the descriptive phrases it looks as though these results are a bit more appropriate.

You read through some of the information and decide that really you are just interested in the internet security resources that discuss Asia. It's time to refine your results. Enter the phrase "internet security" AND asia.

Click on Search.Results returned will be fewer, or refined. However, you find that there are a lot of adverts from consultants who are advertising their skills, but not necessarily giving away much information.You decide to weed out these consultants.

This search would give you resources that discuss internet security in Asia but resources offered by consultants would be screened out.

Using the Boolean term NEAR is also useful. Cyber-stalking for example, is not really an internet security issue, but a security issue that is related to the internet. If you are looking for relevant documents you could try,

This search would give you resources that use the word internet near to the word security. How near these words are placed within the resource depends on the search facility you use. It may be within 10 words or within 50 words. Read the help notes to find out.

Boolean searches are excellent for finding resources that conform to a very narrow description.Building a Boolean search may take a few tries, but the results are worth it.

Note that with quality services such as the search engine you can choose to specify a language returned resources must be in, or leave it undefined. Specifying language knocks out documents in other languages so be very careful when selecting this option.

Finally, it is worth investigating the search engine's Advanced Search Cheat Sheet as there are some very sophisticated search terms you can use to search for: pages with a link to a page with the specified URL text, pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the page title, pages with a specific word or phrase in the URL and much more.It's worth the investment, as clever searching reduces wasted research time.

For more information about using Boolean Logic go to http://www.lepak.com and click on the image of this book.

If the keywords you are using give you results you like, that's fine. If you don't find what you want, you may be using the wrong keywords. For example, if you are interested in heart disease, looking up the word heart will be much less effective than the word cardiac. They mean the same, but online the word cardiac is used to describe heart health resources.

When you start a search for a particular type of resource, write a list of all the descriptive words that you can think of. If these words do not return links to suitable online resources, it is possible you are using an unpopular or redundant descriptive word.There are many words that mean approximately the same (synonyms). Take the keywords you have been using and make up a list of synonyms.To do this, check your keywords with a dictionary and better still a thesaurus.

If you cannot find the proper keywords, surf a directory like Yahoo. Start with a general keyword that looks right and narrow down your choices as move through the categories. Directory headings are often good for identifying more resource keywords.

For example, looking for resources for an essay describing the effect of IT on Islam, you might search the Yahoo directory and find suitable resources by clicking on Society & Culture, Religion, Faiths and Practices, Islam, Science and Islam. You can each of these word to search for more resources with other search facilities.For example:

Once you have one resource you like, you can use this to make a list of keywords.The secret lies in the meta tags, an invisible set of keywords describing the page you are looking at. To see these meta tags, you have to view the source of the page.Netscape users click on View, Page Source.Explorer users click on View, Source.At the top of the page, you should see a label saying meta name="description".Behind this you will see a list of descriptive keywords.Use these to search for more suitable resources.

<HTML>

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Instant Genius! Corporate Web Site Design</TITLE>

</HEAD>

The first few lines of source code for the page at http://www.lepak.com/webgenius.html

Note: not all web masters include meta tags when they design a page so you may be disappointed.However, some search facilities offer a "similar resources" button. If you have a resource you like that doesn't have list of keywords, take the page title and copy and paste it into a search engine.When you see your favourite resource listed, click on the Similar Resources button to find more pages.

This page comes from my book Instant Genius: Internet Research. Curious to find out more? Click on these images for books by Maria O'Daniel: Information Technology Without The Technical Jargon! Published by Pelanduk . Unfortunately, they are out of print. I am considering a compilation and new publication.

If you find this useful, please don't copy it and put it on your web site. Instead, please put in the first paragraph and a link to this page. I need the traffic! If you want a copy for a school intranet where kids can't go online in a general way, I don't mind, AS LONG AS... you keep the whole page intact, including the images of my book, my name and also give me a credit and link to lepak.com. And drop me an email to let me know? Thanks!

Also, please look at two of my books that are now out at bookshops in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and other countries.

Click on the images above for free sneak peek at chapters, prefaces, tables of contents, lists of retailers and other information.

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Basic Guide To Internet Research