Web search engines are like helpful little robots that find certain things for you that are out in Cyber-Apace. With the millions and millions of articles, newsgroups and home pages out there it's quite a daunting task to find a couple of specific things. This is where the search engines come in. You see, you program them to sniff out certain things (just like a hunting dog). The only problem though is that the search engine, like the dog, is only as good as his master has taught him to be. With search engines, this means a variety of things.

When I used a search engine it was Magellan. I typed a topic in to be hunted down and got 45,000 matches. 45,000 Wow! I thought I hit the jackpot but what had really happened was I wasn't being specific enough. It's a good idea to read the Help file or FAQ file to find out more about each engines specific abilities and forms of narrowing your search down because you probably don't have time to look at 45,000 different documents.

Lori Kim said in her report 2 about the lycos search engine"I found out... that the company only paid Lycos if people actually clicked on their advertisements".I though everyone might want to know this, that way if you don't like someone out in Cyber-Space you'll know enough to click on their advertisement and make-um pay (Just don't buy anything, Ha! Ha!). Cherish Higashi found web searching could be a,"time consuming process", that,"took its toll on my patience"watch out for this. A good rule to follow is to narrow the subject matter down to less than a 100 or so relative returns (what the engines bring back from Cyber-Space.) This should help you find the things you want much faster and avoid the trap Cherish fell into.

Three Search Engines

Infoseek is a search engin that can search the World Wide Web, Select Sites, Usenet Newsgroups, Company Directories, E-mail addresses, recent news articles or FAQs (frequently asked questions) Files. It searches these things using keywords that you type in. Click on the Help button and scroll down to search tips right before you start your search. You won't be sorry. The difference could be getting back 45,000 documents which have little to do with your topic or only a couple which you were really looking for.

Magellan is another search engine that I've used. It's a special purpose search engine that I found was kind of slow (could be because I wasn't specific enough) but their FAQ file was very helpful. Magellen like other engines allows fine tuning your search or you can search a database that they have reviewed already. When Magellen searches it checks how many of your words appear in the records, the title, the description, the URL and actual body of the document. The more times it appears the higher a ranking the document gets when the list is returned to you. Magellan also has what they call the green light which is an indicator of suitability for minors.

Alta Vista is a general purpose search engine that I like a lot. One of the main reasons is because it uses an algorithm to decide in which order to return matching documents. Each document gets a ranking based on how many of the search terms it contains, where the words are in the document and how close to each other they appear. The great thing is that spamming (repeating a word over and over in a web page has no effect. Good Bye spammers!

Searching on These Three Engines

I chose the topic of Cyber-Psychology to search on three search engines as a sort of testing ground in which I might report back with what will hopefully be some helpful information. The first search engine I tested out was Magellan. I typed in Cyber-Psychology, hit the search button and several seconds later got back a listing of 46,603 documents. I then realized that I needed to type in Cyber + Psychology (adding the Boolean constrictor). This is because searching Cyber-Psychology really means (to the search engine) to search documents and return those with Cyber or Psychology. Cyber +Psychology means to search documents and return those with both Cyber and Psychology in them. After I modified my search to Cyber+Psychology I got a slightly more narrowed return that included 18,562 matches. As you can see this drastically helped narrow my search by eliminating 28,000 document, but is 18,562 really better. Not really. Not in my mind at least. There are however ways around this, but before I get there, I'd like to share some advice. Don't get discouraged. Here's why. Depending on what you're looking for and what areas of Cyber-Space you're searching through, different engines provide specific pro's and con's that are beyond the scope of my understanding but non the less need to be accounted for. Most of these differences sprout from the algorithms and computer program designs which constitute the respective search engines. All you really need to know however is that you gotta try several different ones and experiment on you own. Here's an example why. After the dismal Magellan search I tried Alta Vista. I typed in Cyber and(Alta Vista's form of the + Boolean constrictor) Psychology, in a short seven seconds, I was returned 27 matches and the first ten were ready for perusal. I attribute this to Alta Vista's Algorithms as well as to some other things they seem to be doing right. The main point however, is that in this instance, one search engine has performed better at a given task. This is a large part of the reason why youhave totest out and experiment with several different search engines as well as topics and subject parameters.

Another thing that was interesting to not about my search on Cyber-Psychology using Alta Vista was the returns I got. Twelve of the first twenty were from the Generation Curriculum and seventeen of the total twenty-seven matches for Cyber-Psychology also came from the Generational Curriculum. The last search engine I tried was Yahoo. The results from the Cyber-Psychology search were very dismal. Only two of Yahoo pre-selected categories applied and neither of them was what I was really looking for. This taught me two things. One, Cyber-Psychology isn't mainstream yet and two, If you ever needed to "mainstream a search, or topic, using Yahoo would be an affective tool for accomplishing that.

All in all, I've learned a lot about search engines, the web, and my online personality (Cyber-presence) in the course of this class. I've learned that the Web is part of an abstract, mentally derived existence that search engines help us to navigate and use effectively. I've also learned that our conscious choice to exist, travel, communicate and interact in Cyber-Space leads to the formation of a Cyber-presence which you can or cannot have conscious control over. One thing I'd also like to share is the fact that with all these new powers at our command, and their latent potential and ability to be abused (as history has proven man's consistent abuse of power) we all must strive at every instance to question all aspects and treat them with the responsibility that this power deserves.

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