The Internet is made up of thousands of "sites" and millions of "web pages". A "site" is a location in cyberspace such as "http://www.usgs.gov", and the "web pages" being the view able pages of information located at this site. To find information on your own would be a frighting task. It would be hit or miss, with a lot more misses than hits. This is where the "Search Engine" comes into play.

A search engine will search the internet for the "keywords" you enter and return a link to that web page you can goto. Using a search engine is a skill in itself, that you can easily master. The keywords you enter should not be too generic yet not to restricting. For example: the keyword "maps" may be too generic, that is, returning thousands of results. But the keywords "maps" and "pennsylvania" may get the results you want. To get even more specific enter: "maps" "pennsylvania" "apollo". This search will more than likely return fewer results.

A note on keyword selection: try different combinations of a word or phrase. For example, if you were looking for "water faucet", also try "water-faucet" or "waterfaucet". Also, try a misspelling of the word: "water faset", as not everyone can spell or has a spell checker.

Different search engines require different search criteria, that is, some require a "+" before a keyword if that keyword must appear in the result. Read each search engines Help page for details. A lot of the time it is just a matter of experimenting with your search keywords. Try the same search on different sites, as each search engine has different pages indexed. Some of the major search engines are:

http://www.yahoo.com http://www.lycos.com

Lately I find myself using the meta search engines, that is, search engines that search multiple search engines for you. Some of these include: http://www.alltheweb.com http://www.metacrawler.com http://www.google.com http://www.dogpile.com

Let's use Google. http://www.google.com

Search Tips

You may want to print this page to follow the example shown.

Let's try the above example and look for some maps.

Enter "map" (no quotes) into the search field and click the "Google Search" button.

Wow, over 48,400,000 hits for map. I don't know about you but I don't have the time to review 48 million hits. Let's try again. Click the back button on your browser. Now enter "pennsylvania" beside "map" in the search field. (leave a space between them). Click the "Google Search" button.

That's better, ONLY 1,360,000 hits, still WAY too many for me. Click the back button again and enter "apollo" beside "pennsylvania". Click the "Google Search" button. Now we get 7,590 hits. This is more reasonable, but I am still not happy, let's do one more. Enter "historical" beside "apollo" and click the "Google Search" button. 557 hits are returned. See how easy it is! Try different combinations of words and phrases and see what you get.

Google's default is all the words you enter MUST appear in the search results. That is why each search returns fewer hits. On our fourth try, the words: map, pennsylvania, apollo and historical must ALL appear somewhere in the page searched. If you want to search for a name or phrase, enclose it in quotes: "historical map". This will require that these two words appear together in the page searched.

I hope this takes away some of the mystery of search engines.

Go to this page for help in creating keywords for searches.

Search Tips

Research Step by Step

1) List all possible information that you know about your site such as: state, county, name, date ,type etc.

Such as: (these will be used as keywords in your search)

State pennsylvania County armstrong Type coal town Name Freeport Name Gamble and Sons (owners of mine) Date around 1880

2) Use a search engine to locate any items based on the information above.

3) Try to find a map. http://topozone.com for the site.

4) Use GNIS finder to locate a site. (If possible)

5) Print out results and store together in a file for later use. See Sitelog for an example

Final Note:

Not all searches will be fruitful everytime. The key is to keep trying, as you may hit paydirt. Don't waste a lot of time searching, sometimes the information is just not there. If I don't get results in an hour or so I move on to another search. Also, check back at a site a month or so later, many sites add items over time. Good Luck!

All contents Copyright © 2000 Randy Steele