Searching the Web
It takes one to know one
The problem arises with the first step of searching, and that is knowing where to look. If you left your phone at work, no amount of digging through the sock drawer is going to help. An understanding of exactly what you’re asking is essential to knowing where to ask it, and being able to find the right thing depends partially on having a large array of search tools at your disposal. Google has proven useful for a number of situations, and they are slowly but surely increasing the number and quality of services they offer. Another effective tool is online forums, though they are decidedly harder to use and require a certain amount of patience and tact as you are dealing with real human beings who are there voluntarily and may not have the answers you’re looking for.
Crowd sourcing is an effective means to determine opinions if you’re looking for something like the best photo editor or the name of a good divorce lawyer in NYC. One such tool is the ever popular Twitter, but many times your question will fall on deaf or uncaring ears and your pleas will be lost in the noise (approximately 20-25 tweets per second) unless you invest the time and effort involved in building up a dedicated following. Other more stable crowd sourcing tools are ones such as Digg and Del.icio.us which are community “bookmarking” websites that can be used to determine currently popular topics.
That’s not a knife, THIS is a knife!
Once you’ve selected your weapon of choice, you must learn how to use it. Like the young ninja it takes time, practice, and proper guidance to learn to effectively use your tool. Knowing what keywords are used to refer to your topic and, when crowd sourcing, what keywords are likely to get someones attention are vital. Remember that there is no well defined path to the information you are looking for, and something that works on Twitter probably won’t work on Google.
Professional information searchers do not have a single style. There is no “correct” way to search on the Internet. Search styles have been described as ranging from ‘ants’ – the carefully planned, methodical search hoping to get exact results on the first try – to ‘grasshoppers’ – intuitively jumping from topic to topic, refining results as more is learned. Only you can determine what your style is.
(Taken from the 62 page HowTo on searching the internet by TheWebTools Company)
Keep your head above the water
It’s common for people to dive right in to their searches and pluck out results, but there are many times when just having the results is not enough. The relevence of information with regards to what you were actually looking for and the reliability and authority of the source are all things that should be kept in mind. For example, Wikipedia is excellent for looking up basic information, however due to the fact that the articles are written by the community and can be edited by anyone to say anything, it should be treated as more of a summary whereas the real information is located in the references.
Another problem with searching is that there are millions of people on the internet all just dying to be heard. With the ongoing social media revolution, it is becomming apparent that there are people who will do anything and say anything to be heard. At times this includes using misleading keywords to direct people to a website which has nothing to do with what they were searching for in the first place. Keyword searches like those used when searching with Google are subject to abuse on a grand scale by those who want to manipulate the results.
Your best defence is a good offence! What do you use to search?