Searching the Internet Effectively:

Search strategies

This page suggests some strategies for particular types of search.

Known pages

You know the page exists, you just don't have the URL, or the URL you've been given is wrong. Try:

Entering specific words (the more unique the better) into a search engine.
Go to the web page of an organisation associated with the page, and follow links/ do a site search.
Find a directory specialising in the topic
Try searching on links to the "old" URL. This may produce pages that have corrected their links.
If you get an error for a URL, try "lopping off" directories and filenames from right-hand end of URL. If

http://www.vuw.ac.nz/staff/alastair_smith/branch/twig/leaf.htm

http://www.vuw.ac.nz/staff/alastair_smith/branch/twig/

http://www.vuw.ac.nz/staff/alastair_smith/branch

If the page has disappeared, you might be able to retrieve it:

From a search engine cache, e.g. if it appears in a Google search result, look for the "cached" link which takes you to the version of the page that Google last indexed.
Check a web page archive such as the Internet archive.

Ready Reference

At many Web sites, the compilers have gathered together a list of favourite sources under such titles as "Virtual Reference Library" or "Reference Desk". Some of the tools listed will be held at that site, some are links to tools at other sites. One such list, is at the Internet Public Library and contains:

Almanacs
Conversion tools
Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
News and Current Events Sources
etc...

An interesting development in ready reference sources on the Internet is the user maintained encyclopedia, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/. Articles in the Wikipedia are written by users, and if you see information that you think is incorrect, or incomplete, you can update the entry. Wikipedia also acts as a directory, by providing links to websites on a topic.

Wikipedia performs the function of an encyclopedia, of providing a quick overview of a topic, and links to more detailed resources. However Wikipedia entries may not be as clearly written as in a conventional encyclopedia, and may include misleading information that has yet to be corrected. If you have doubts about information in Wikipedia, or if the reliability of the information is critical:

check the editing history of the page
check the page a day or so later to see if the information has changed
check if the article gives a source (warning messages often appear on information that does not cite a source), and follow this up.
confirm the information from other sources

Check a Wikipedia article on a topic that you are familiar with.

New Zealand/ Australian material

Use New Zealand and Australian search engines and directories, e.g.

Directories:

Te Puna Web Directory
newzealand.govt.nz (Official NZ Government directory)

Search Engines:

SearchNZ

BUT be aware:

No search engine is likely to achieve better than 50% recall on average, you need to search several for good coverage
NZ search engines tend to have fewer search features
Approximately 25% of sites relevant to NZ and Australia are NOT in the .nz and .au domains

Product searches

It is possible to use the Internet to locate useful information if you are buying a product

Search on prominent brand names
Search newsgroups for a discussion group where people debate the merits of particular models

Finding Email addresses, people etc.

There are some specialised services that trace people's home pages, email addresses etc.

Yahoo People Search
Telecom white and yellow pages

You can also simply search on a person's name in a search engine. Note that tools for finding people's email addresses are becoming rarer due to concerns about spam harvesting.

Geographic locations, maps, etc

Google Maps provides maps and satellite images for most of the world - some countries have more detail than others. New Zealand has street maps courtesy of Wises http://www.wises.co.nz/.

For summaries of country details, try

Terminology, acronyms, foreign language terms etc

The search engines constitute huge word banks, that can be used in the same way as dictionaries. If you're uncertain of the spelling or usage of a term, try searching on it (remember that mis-spelt words will get significant numbers of hits). Searching on a term in Google using for example: "define:tuatara" will fetch a range of definitions from the Web.

If you want the foreign equivalent of an english term, try searching for the english term in foreign language sites (Most search engines allow you to restrict your search to specific language pages). This may bring up multilingual pages with the term occurring in both languages. Alternatively, you can try Google's language tools.

Journal Articles

As well as pure e-journals, many print journals have web sites where some of their content may be available. A search on the journal title (or a guess at its URL) may lead you to the text of an article. Infomine's list of electronic journals is a good directory of electronic journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals provides an index to free, Internet journals.

Images

The major search engines, e.g. Google and Yahoo! have image search options that find images that are associated with your search keywords. Be aware that the search is only for text associated with the image, e.g. in the filename or surrounding text. You can ask to refine your search to images that are similar to one that you find relevant. Google is experimenting with a Similar Images search, which attempts to find images with similar features.