Question

Discuss how simple searches, such as those performed earlier in the chapter, offer a basic approach to finding information on the Web; in turn, discuss how more complex searches require the use of Boolean operators or the advanced search forms offered by most search engines.

Answer 1

Simple Searches- Web-based searches will allow us to find all types of information as a business, people, images, document database, etc. The search tools help us to find the right information. They are of 3 types. The directories, search engines,meta-search engines.

• The directory is the human complied hierarchically list of web pages organized by category. The first directory developed was YAHOO.
• The search engine performs a search for the keyword in the database. the search result depends upon factors like size of the database, frequency of updating, searching capability, search speed, design of the search interface and the way in which the result is displayed. Search engines will find about 625 million active websites.we have chosen as our wish. No search engine is perfect, and they all have different blind spots. the most widely used are Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Dogpile. google scholar for academic articles and Zanran is used when data and statistics is needed.
• The Meta search tools are also known as the multi-threaded search engine. They search on multiple database simultaneously.which will increase the search speed. Examples are Metacrawler, SurfWax, etc.   

Complex Search- A search strategy must be followed for better results. It consists of the following steps:

1. Frame the research question and its scope
2. Identify the important concepts and remove unuseful words.
3. Identify the keywords from the concepts
4. Consider synonyms of the search term
5. Prepare your search logic
6. Enclosing a search term within quotation marks      Searching using operators-

1.Wildcard Searches using the * symbol as a placeholder for another word. example *animal in the world

2.Combination Searches/Boolean Operators: the OR operator enables you to search for two or more terms simultaneously, and is most useful when those terms are very similar. Another way to combine searches is to use AND. example Canada AND USA, ocean OR sea.''

3. Search a Specific Site: when you type site: followed by the URL of the website that you wish to search and a search term, you limit your search to a single website.site:google.com ''house''.

4. Finding Related Sites: another useful operator is related: Typing this in front of a web address that you already know – as in related:Bing.com

Advanced search form- It is used to structure a complex search query. The advanced search form will allow us to use boolean operators, filter the search by language and type, etc.