1.2 Create a search strategy to fully satisfy the client's enquiry

Table of Contents

1. Choosing search terms
2. Structuring an Internet search
   1. Search Engines
   2. Differences between search engines
   3. Compound queries
   4. How search engines work
   5. Metacrawlers
   6. Web directories
   7. Differences between directories and search engines
3. Using portals
4. Using bibliographic databases
5. Frequently-used websites
6. Website suffixes

How search engines work

It is helpful to know a little about how search engines work. In simple terms, they search the Internet and look at the websites and their contents. They index the information they find on the site and in the metadata descriptions placed on each site by its creator. This information is used to lead from your search terms to the results. Of course each search engine uses its own particular methods. You can find out more about this either by doing a search or looking for information on the actual search engines.

This matching does have its pitfalls and if using ambiguous search terms you may get at best many useless results and at worst offensive ones.

Let's take a look now at Metacrawlers ...