Using a Search Engine

Surfing may be entertaining, but a user often needs to locate specific information relating to a particular topic. Software called a search engine is used in this case. A search engine is a program that is able to search through large quantities of text and other data, according to specific instructions that it has been given.

There will usually be a choice of search engines that can be accessed through the search button on the toolbar. Given the same starting information, each of these may produce different results because they search in different ways. A search engine will normally request key words to describe what a user is looking for and there are several ways of searching:

• If you type in the key words traffic jams, a search engine will search for all documents that contain traffic and/or jams, giving highest priority to those that contain both words. This could result in a long and confusing list of possible contacts.
• If only lower case letters are used, the search will find documents that contain the words regardless of whether they are in lower or upper case. If a mixture of upper and lower case is specified, the search will try to find words that match the words exactly – Traffic jams.
• You can place double quotation marks around the phrase to make sure that the search engine finds only the documents where the words appear in that order.

Learning how to structure a search is very important. Exam questions sometimes ask you to construct a set of search criteria.

Search criteria are used to reduce the size of the list of contacts produced, but it will still often be necessary to use more precise search instructions (carry out an advanced search):