Junior links | Middle School links | VCE links

Searching Tips

Once you have decided that the Internet is the best place to find the information you require you need to be able to do two things to use it effectively        

1. Define what it is you are looking for

Keyword Searching To search effectively online you need two or three search words called keywords which describe the subject in which you are interested.

Tips for choosing keywords

• If possible use a phrase, e.g. "drugs in sport"

• Be specific. Think of two or three words that unambiguously describe the subject

• Try searching with synonyms - alternative words with the same meaning eg falcon OR hawk 

2. Be able to use the search tools (eg search engines) to find it

• Become familiar with several search engines. There is no "best" engine. Be prepared to try a different search engine if you don't get the results you want with your first search.

Remember even the biggest search engines only index up to one third of the Internet's public documents.

• Double check your spelling.

• Use lower case when typing your search queries as most search engines will match on both upper and lower case. For general searches, it is the safest form to use. Where the search engine does support upper or mixed case, if you use upper case characters the engine assumes you want an exact match.

For the few engines that do support capitalization, you can use this fact to advantage in finding proper names or place names

eg Bath will restrict your search results to the place of that name

• Be careful of spacing. You should have only one space between each search term.