Menu
homeBrowsers

What to look for on the Internet? How to properly search for information on the Internet. Effective tips for searching information on the Internet

Absolutely any human activity in the modern world, if we are talking about even the slightest development and obtaining new information, involves a search for new data. But simply looking for information is one thing, but searching for it professionally and competently is another. In this lesson we will talk about what information search is in general, where and how to look for information, how to select sources of information, analyze them and check for reliability, and also talk about the rules for searching for information on the Internet and working with the data received.

What is information retrieval?

The concept of “information retrieval” was first used in 1948 by the American mathematician and computer scientist Calvin Mooers, but it began to appear in the public literature only in 1950.

Automated information retrieval (meaning information retrieval systems) was originally used to find scientific data and relevant literature, and was used by universities and public libraries. However, with the advent and development of the Internet, information retrieval has become widespread.

In essence, information search is the process of identifying in a certain array of text documents those data that relate to a specific topic and satisfy the specified conditions, and which contain the necessary information and facts.

The process of searching for information consists of several successive stages through which data collection, processing and provision are ensured. Typically, the search is carried out as follows:

  • The information need is determined and the request is formulated
  • A set of sources is identified that may contain the necessary information.
  • Information is extracted from identified sources
  • The data is reviewed and the search results are evaluated

But, despite the fact that at the first stage you need to decide as correctly as possible what specific information you are going to look for (and this may seem paramount), it is the second stage that is of greatest importance, because deciding where to look for information is an order of magnitude more difficult.

Where to look for information?

The question of where to look for information is indeed very important. And first of all, for the reason that this is the information age. And this, in turn, means that information retrieval currently has its own specifics.

Let's remember: at the end of the last century and even the beginning of this century, people turned to specialized institutions to search for information. These include libraries, archives, card indexes and other similar information bodies. But if at that time, in order to find information about what he was interested in, a person had to get ready, leave the house, get to the right place, fill out an application, stand in line to give it, wait a while until the necessary literature was found, and then spend several hours searching for specific information and writing it down on paper, then today all these points can be bypassed, because Almost every home has a computer and Internet access. Based on this, information bases (archives, libraries, etc.) that were relevant in the not so distant past (archives, libraries, etc.) today, if they have not lost their relevance, then, in any case, have a much smaller number of clients.

To find what you need on the Internet, you simply need to enter a query in the search service line (remember the first stage), click the “Find” button and select the most suitable of the proposed options - Internet pages. We will continue to talk about searching for information on the Internet a little later, but for now we will note that you should not neglect traditional methods of searching for information, and from time to time you can visit a library, card index or archive. In addition, this will allow you to diversify your activities, unwind and spend time in an unusual, useful and interesting way.

Speaking about the selection of sources for searching for information, one cannot help but touch upon the issue of reliability, which indicates the need to be able to analyze data sources and identify those that can be trusted.

How to choose reliable sources of information?

Any discussion on the topic of what sources there may be and which should be considered reliable, one way or another, will lead us to a stylistic understanding of the sources of information, and there are a considerable number of them. Let's present only the most common ones:

  • Scientific research backed by real empirical evidence
  • Popular scientific reflections, including both factual empirical data and subjective points of view of people who are specialists in a particular field
  • Philosophical treatises and arguments, distinguished by the greatest originality, subjectivity and form of presentation
  • Fiction, which, as a rule, serves as a source of information - food for thought, but not reliable empirical data
  • Journalistic works are a category of works that are devoted to current phenomena and problems of current social life. Often in such works you can find a lot of reliable data and facts.
  • Mass media - a set of bodies for the public transmission of information, such as television, radio, magazines and newspapers, as well as the Internet

You should always take into account that almost no source of information data can be 100% reliable. The only exceptions are scientific research and, to some extent, popular scientific reflections, because, as has already been noted, they contain mainly facts confirmed by experience and officially recognized by the scientific community (there are, of course, people and points views that run counter to generally accepted ones, but in this article we will not consider special cases).

Information from any other sources should be carefully checked to ensure its relevance and veracity. But before moving directly to the principles of information selection, it would not be superfluous to say that for the process of information search itself it is very convenient and effective to use the ideas of a special philosophical direction - positivism, because thanks to this, in a number of cases (especially if it concerns the search for specifically scientific data), many questions disappear by themselves.

Just a little about positivism

Positivism is a philosophical trend in the doctrine of methods and procedures of scientific activity, in which it is believed that the only source of true and valid knowledge in general is only empirical (experimentally confirmed) research.

Positivism also says that philosophical research does not carry cognitive value. The basic premise of positivism is that any genuine (aka positive) knowledge is a set of results of special sciences.

The main goal of positivism is to obtain objective knowledge, which is possible only through testing information in practice. With all this in mind, we can once again return to the idea that the most reliable sources of information are scientific research and popular science speculation.

Armed with this principle as a basic one, you can begin to use others.

Principles of information selection

There are several principles for selecting information:

The principle of visibility

The information being studied, which corresponds to this principle, has the following characteristics:

  • Information is accessible for perception and understanding
  • The images formed by the information are reliable, because they can be modeled and their sources identified
  • Basic concepts, objects and phenomena can be demonstrated
  • Information meets the requested criteria

Scientific principle

The scientific principle implies that the information being studied corresponds to modern scientific data. If such correspondence is observed, then it becomes possible to detect inaccuracies and errors, perceive other points of view, be guided by one’s own argumentation and transform information by comparing it with another.

Briefly, the criteria for the scientific principle can be expressed as follows:

  • The data corresponds to modern scientific ideas
  • If there are errors and inaccuracies in the data array, they are not capable of leading to distortions in the objective picture regarding the issue under consideration
  • The information may take the form of a historical document that shows the path of development of specific scientific knowledge

Principle of relevance

According to this principle, information should be practical, topical, relevant to modern needs, and important at the current time. Such information can arouse the greatest interest, as opposed to irrelevant information. Here you need to be guided by the following considerations:

  • It is desirable that the information be close in time and of concern to the researcher
  • Information can be a document that expands the understanding of the object under study
  • The information must have historical value or be otherwise important
  • Information can be a classic example of something that everyone knows

Systematic principle

If the information complies with the principle of systematicity, one can observe its repeated repetition in one or another interpretation within one source or in the same or another similar interpretation in other sources.

Thus, the information is worthy of attention and can be applied if:

  • Similar data can be found in various databases
  • Different interpretations do not destroy the integrity of ideas about the same problem

Accessibility principle

Often, difficulties in searching and processing information can be caused, firstly, by its content itself, and, secondly, by the style in which it is presented. For this reason, when working with information, it is necessary to take into account that:

  • Information should not only be understandable in terms of terminology, but also expand the researcher’s thesaurus, which is why it will be perceived as interesting, but not banal
  • The information must correspond to the terminology that the researcher has, but it must cover a specific topic from different angles
  • Information should also involve didactic processing, which removes the terminological barrier; in other words, information can be adapted to suit you, while maintaining its meaning

Redundancy principle

The information being studied should allow the researcher to highlight the main idea, find the hidden meaning, if any, come to an understanding of the author’s position, determine the goals of the presentation, and develop the ability to relate the content to the purpose.

The principles of information retrieval that we discussed can be applied when working with any data sources: books, documents, archival materials, newspapers and magazines, as well as Internet sites. In fact, these principles are universal, but here you should clearly understand that to search for information in traditional sources they may be quite sufficient, but when searching for information on the Internet, in order to avoid mistakes, you must follow one more set of rules.

Rules for searching information on the Internet

For an experienced user, searching for information on the Internet is extremely simple, however, for people who are faced with the issue of automated information retrieval for the first time, this process may seem quite complicated due to the abundance of various search operators. Below we'll look at simple search and advanced search, as well as provide additional information that will be useful when searching for data on the Internet.

Easily search for information on the Internet

To begin with, it is worth saying that the most popular search engine in the world is Google. In Russia, “Yandex”, “[email protected]” and “Rambler” are added to it.

To find the information you need, you just need to enter the query of interest into the search bar of the service, for example, “Ivan the Terrible” or “How to drive a car correctly,” and press “Find” or the “Enter” key on your computer keyboard. As a result, the search engine will return many pages that provide information on the requested query. Please note that the most relevant results are those located on the first page of the search engine.

Advanced search for information on the Internet

In principle, an advanced search is no different from a simple search, except that you can specify additional parameters.

Using special filters, the user has the opportunity to set additional conditions for his request. This may be limited by region, a specific site, the desired language, the form of a word or phrase, the date the material was posted, or the type of file.

To activate these functions, you need to click on the special icon located on the search engine page. An additional menu will open where restrictions are set. Filters (restrictions) are reset by clicking the “Clear” button on the search engine page.

Additional Information

Each user should keep in mind that:

  • A region restriction starts a search in the specified region. As a standard (Default), requests are usually issued for the region from which the user accesses the Network.
  • Restriction on the form of the request starts a search in those documents where the words have exactly the form that is in the request, but the order of the words may change. The user can set the case of letters (uppercase or lowercase), any part of speech and form, i.e. declension, number, gender, case, etc. By default, search engines search for all forms of the requested word, i.e. if you ask “wrote”, the search engine will search for “write”, “will write”, etc. The search engine will not look for words with the same root.
  • A site restriction triggers a search for information among documents available on a specific site.
  • A language restriction starts a search for information in the selected language. It is possible to set a search in several languages ​​simultaneously.
  • A file type restriction triggers a search for a specific document format, i.e. by specifying the appropriate extensions, you can find text documents, audio and video files, documents intended to be opened with special programs and editors, etc. It is possible to set a search for several types of files at the same time.
  • An update date restriction triggers a search based on the specific date the document was posted. The user can find a document from a specific date, month and year, and also set a time period - then the search engine will display all the information added during this period of time.

These rules will be enough to search for information on the Internet. Any person can master it, and it will take very little time - usually literally 2-3 three practical approaches are enough.

But what to do with the information found, since its entire array is not required for study? No matter how you choose to search for information on a topic of interest - going to the library or clicking on websites while drinking coffee - in addition to having search skills, you also need to be able to process the material you are studying. And note-taking and some other techniques are perfect for this.

Working with the information received: notes, mental maps, reference diagrams and flowcharts

Note-taking is rightfully considered the most popular and used method of processing information. Taking this into account, we decided to pay the greatest attention to this process, and to provide only introductory information on mental maps, reference diagrams and flowcharts.

What is a synopsis?

As we all know, a synopsis is a written text that consistently and briefly summarizes the main points of any source of information. Note-taking involves bringing information taken from the original to a certain structure. The basis of this process is data systematization. Notes can be either exact excerpts and quotes, or in the form of free writing - the main thing is that the meaning remains. The style in which the summary is kept is in most cases close to the original source.

When compiled correctly, the notes reflect the logical and semantic connection of what is being written down. The notes can be taken after some time or given to a friend, and reading and understanding the material will not cause difficulties. A competent summary facilitates the perception of even the most complex information, because it is expressed in an understandable form.

Notes also differ in types, and in order to be able to correctly use the type of notes that is more suitable for the work being performed, you need to be able to distinguish between these types.

Types of notes

There are planned notes, schematic planned notes, textual, thematic and free notes. Briefly about each of them.

Planning notes

The basis of a planned outline is pre-prepared material, and the outline itself includes headings and subheadings (paragraphs and subparagraphs). Each of the headings is accompanied by a small text, which is why it has a clear structure.

The planned outline is most consistent with preparation for seminars and public speaking. The clearer the structure, the more logical and complete it will be possible to convey information to the addressee. According to experts, the planned outline should be supplemented with notes indicating the sources used, because it is quite difficult.

Schematic plan outline

A schematic plan outline consists of plan points presented in the form of question sentences that need to be answered. When working with information, you need to make several notes for each of the sentences and questions. Such a summary will reflect the structure and internal connection of the data. In addition, this type of notes helps to understand the material being studied well.

Text summary

The textual summary differs from all others in its maximum saturation, because excerpts and quotes from the original source are used to compile it. It can easily be supplemented with a plan, terms, concepts and theses. It is recommended to compile a textual summary for those who are engaged in the study of literature or science, because here quotations are of particular importance.

But this type of notes is not easy to compile, because... it is necessary to be able to identify the most important passages of text and quotes so that, ultimately, they can give a holistic view of the material studied.

Thematic summary

The thematic summary differs from others most of all. Its meaning is that a specific topic, issue or problem is covered, and a number of sources of information are usually used to compile it.

Through a thematic summary, you can best analyze the topic under study, reveal the main points and study them from different angles. But you need to understand that to compile such a summary you will need to research a lot of sources in order to be able to create a holistic picture - this is an indispensable condition for truly high-quality material.

Free notes

Free notes are the best choice for people who are able to use different ways of working with information. You can include everything in a free summary: abstracts, quotes, text excerpts, outline, notes, extracts, etc. You just need to be able to express your thoughts quickly and competently and work with the material. Many people believe that using notes of this form is the most complete and holistic.

Once you have decided what kind of notes you will make, you can begin the process itself. To do the job efficiently, you need to follow certain rules.

Rules for writing notes

There are several such rules and they are all extremely simple:

  1. Read the text, identify its main features, character, complexity; determine whether it contains terms that you see for the first time. Mark unfamiliar concepts, places, dates, names.
  2. Find out all the necessary information about what seemed unfamiliar to you in the text when you first read it. Make inquiries about people and events. Find out the meaning of the terms. Be sure to record the received data.
  3. Read the text again and analyze it. This will help you highlight the main points, divide the information for yourself into separate blocks and notes.
  4. Study the previously noted main points, compose abstracts or write down individual fragments or quotes (if their presence is not necessary, then express the author’s idea in your own words while maintaining the meaning). When recording quotes and excerpts, be sure to note where the information came from and who the author is.
  5. If you have the opportunity to express the author’s thoughts in your own words, then try to do it in such a way that even large amounts of data are expressed in 2-3 sentences.

By applying these recommendations in practice, you will master the skill of competent note-taking, and you will be able to record and process information very quickly and efficiently (you can use the additional one as an aid).

In addition to notes, you can use other equally interesting and effective techniques to record information.

Mental maps

Mental maps, or, as they are commonly called, mind maps, mind maps, thought maps or associative maps, are a method of structuring information that uses graphical records in the form of diagrams.

Mental maps are depicted in the form of tree diagrams, which contain tasks, terms, facts and/or any other data that are connected by branches. Branches, as a rule, depart from the main (central) concept.

The effectiveness of this method is due to the fact that it can be used as a convenient and simple information management tool, which requires only paper and pencil (you can also use a dry erase board and markers).

Support diagrams

Supporting schemes clearly reflect the intellectual psychological structure of a person, which controls his thinking and behavior. They allow you to present information using a logical-graphic language through meaningful supports.

When drawing up a reference diagram, its name is indicated, key concepts are noted, and the indicators and criteria on the basis of which the material is grouped are schematically depicted.

This type of information structuring is very convenient when preparing for tests, exams, and seminars. It can be accompanied by notes and additional notes.

Block diagrams

Flowcharts are another effective method for helping to structure information. It represents graphical models that describe a sequence.

The essence of a flowchart is to depict individual steps in the form of blocks of different shapes. All blocks are connected to each other by arrow lines that indicate the desired sequence of thinking.

Most often, flowcharts are used to work with clearly structured information, when all steps are specific. Each block, having its own shape, indicates a particular thought process, and you can navigate using the flowchart even with a minimum amount of text data on it. Convenient to use as an additional tool.

Finally

As one can conclude, searching for information and processing it is not only an interesting, but also a fascinating activity. If you learn to apply this skill, taking into account all the features that we talked about today, finding the necessary information and using it for your own purposes will not be difficult, especially if you perform an acceptable algorithm of actions several times in a row.

In the next lesson, you will learn why it is recommended to follow a specific plan in the process of self-study, how to create it, and what you need to pay attention to in order to study as effectively as possible.

Test your knowledge

If you want to test your knowledge on the topic of this lesson, you can take a short test consisting of several questions. For each question, only 1 option can be correct. After you select one of the options, the system automatically moves on to the next question. The points you receive are affected by the correctness of your answers and the time spent on completion. Please note that the questions are different each time and the options are mixed.


You go to the PS website, and then enter the query you need into the search bar. As a result, you get approximately the following list of results (almost everything is the same for everyone, so I’ll show you using Yandex as an example):

The results are located in a list that contains the following data:

1 - Title of the found page

2 - Found words in the text of the page

3 - Website address

I will note here that search engines like to “distort” the searched words, i.e. They transform them to make it clearer. For example, a noun can be made an adjective, a verb an adverb, etc. This was done in order to improve the search.
Some search engines also add all sorts of icons and additional pages on the site. This is not particularly important and does not change the essence.

Now closer to the essence of the article itself.

Let's assume that you need to find how to grow geraniums in the garden. Usually you write this request directly to the PS line and see the results:


A list of more or less relevant sites that contain these words is displayed. But as you can see, there is no content here that we are looking for and need. Therefore, in order to improve the quality of your search, it is recommended to do the following:
  • Reduce the number of words in the query (for example, write geraniums in the garden)
  • Replace some words with synonyms (for example how to plant geraniums in the garden)
  • Remove "unnecessary words". What is meant here is that you need to highlight the keywords in the search and leave them (for example, geranium garden care)

    You can also try searching in other PSs.

    Few people know, but all PSs also distinguish special commands for work.

    To make it clearer, I’ll use the example above and put the words in quotes "


    Have you noticed how everything has changed? Instead of the previous 274 thousand sites containing more or less similar answers, now there were only 2 (or more precisely, one) containing the exact answer. Do you think miracles? No. We simply indicated to the PS that we do not need to parse our phrase into synonyms and do not need to look for at least some coincidence of words. We clearly indicated to her that we needed exactly this phrase and nothing more.

    And quotes are not the only operator that can be used in PS.

    For example, you can write url: Windows site and then the search engine will give you all the pages on the site site that contain the word Windows.

    I will not take bread away from the authors and developers of the PS and will not show that only this site has a detailed description and analysis of these operators, as most site administrators do, leaving users in the dark. No! I will give you links to the official pages of Search Engines, which describe in detail which operators are used and how they should be used to make your request the most successful.

    And you can find out about other PSs from them. Or write in the comments and I will give you a link.

    And finally, I would like to add the well-known phrase: “He who seeks will always find.”

    • Hello, dear friends!

    We devoted a lot of time to how to prepare for the Unified State Exam in history and social studies; we analyzed the lion's share of tasks, the principles of their implementation, and much more. By the way, to find all this at once, I recommend going to the page

    However, we paid little attention to methodological assistance to applicants: where and how to find information on the Internet? Often many people say: “Everything is on the Internet”, “Well, there is the Internet”..., but few people really know how to search for information on the Internet, and do not go beyond the first page of the search engine. This article is about how to properly search for information on the Internet!

    The myth that people know how to search for information on the Internet is refuted by my daily experience of communicating with students: it happens that during a test you see that the group is weak, and you turn a blind eye to the fact that the student is looking for material on the phone. If he scores, it means the student enters the search engine query “Witte Reforms”.

    And so, it means that the student to whom I gave a detailed lecture on the era of Nicholas II is trying to “sell” material from Wikipedia to me... After his attempt, you ask him the question: “What positive aspects, in your opinion, did these reforms have?” , and in response there is silence.

    Why? Because Wikipedia does not reflect ready-made points of view on Sergei Yulievich’s reforms. As a result, a weak C... Thirdly, the student does not see beyond the third position in the search engine results!

    Why am I saying this? Moreover, you need to be able to search for information on the Internet! A person who masters this skill would be able to pass the topics with a solid B if he knew how to find information and work with it.

    So, first of all, when searching for information on the Internet, you need to decide on what topic you will be looking for information on. For example, I am interested in the topic of the Witte reform. How will I do this? I will definitely not go to Google, I will go to Yandex, because Yandex is “tailored” for Russia, for normal and high-quality sites, and not for those offered by Google. I’m not criticizing search engines here, I just know how Yandex works and how Google works.

    To advance according to a search query in Yandex, you need to have really high-quality and unique content. Where can I get it from? Only if you reprint some historical book, which a priori contains much more information than in Wikipedia. Or you are an expert in the topic and understand it so well that you create unique content.

    So if you need any specific queries about Russia, go to Yandex!

    Next, I enter a query, and then I don’t click on the first link that comes across, which, by the way, no longer leads to Wikipedia, but to a site where there is something on history, but I look at the headlines. I analyze them based on my tasks: if I just feel stupidly urgent to find out, I click on the first link, and if I need details or conceptual materials, I look for the conceptual title.

    In our case, this will be the title "Witte's reforms. An attempt to modernize the country." I click on it and get cool material made in 2005, when students didn’t use the Internet much, but still went to libraries.

    I don’t recommend going to the abstracts, since they usually need to be downloaded, and this is a chore, and it’s not a fact that it will turn out to be good. By the way, I will soon write a post about how to write a normal, correct essay and give an example of my essay, which I will write specifically for this post!

    Next, we see that the last link on the page leads to a specialized site on history, we click - and we get detailed, high-quality unique material. We go to the second page of the search - and we see that there is much more of the same quality information than on the first page of the search!

    The third recommendation is to formulate your request precisely! If I need Witte’s reforms, I write “Vitee’s Reforms”, and not “Witte”, “Vite”, or some other way. If I need to find a biography of a person, I write “Witte biography” - that is, I try to give the search keyword and qualifying element (“biography”). And I don’t go to Wikipedia, since there is only general information on the issue - I still need to find out what I need from it! It’s better to find a page with ready-made information than to search on your mobile phone for the required part of a Wikipedia page!

    Just for fun, you can also know that there are special characters, by entering which you can find more necessary information on the Internet. For example, a space between words means to a search engine that you need information about two elements at once, and not separately. The “+” sign means the same as the space. There are many more symbols there, but this is not as important as my fourth recommendation on how to find information on the Internet: look for material on specialized sites!

    You can immediately see from the site whether it is specialized or not! If there are articles about everything, then there is nothing there. You can just type “History website” into the search query. Also use search engine directories. For example, sites included in the Yandex catalog are distinguished by intelligence and ingenuity..., just kidding... 🙂 Better quality content.

    From the article it may seem that I underestimate Google, but in fact I use it much more often than Yandex. Google is more democratic or something.

    I hope you now understand how to find information on the Internet? If you have any questions, ask in the comments!

    Tutorial on working with the Internet

    Communicating via the Internet (18 lessons)

    Basics of working on the Internet (26 lessons)
    Mobile operators on the Internet (35 lessons)
    The best mail on the Internet (17 lessons)
    Searching for information on the Internet (9 lessons)
    Google services (27 lessons)
    Payment systems (37 lessons)
    Secrets of Odnoklassniki.ru (14 lessons)
    Secrets of VKontakte (14 lessons)
    Download to the Internet (17 lessons)
    Looking for work on the Internet (7 lessons)
    Buying online (19 lessons)
    Best Internet services (41 lessons)
    Review of the YouTube video service (10 lessons)
    Yandex.Bookmarks (7 lessons)
    Where to go in the evening? (6 lessons)
    Review of the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia (6 lessons)
    Mail.ru Agent: All-in-one communication (11 lessons)
    Skype: what's new? (11 lessons)
    Twitter - the most popular microblogging service (10 lessons)
    Facebook is the most popular social network in the world (10 lessons)
    Review of the QIP Infium program (10 lessons)
    Ya.Online (8 lessons)
    Creating a page on the LiveJournal.ru website (7 lessons)
    Dating site Mamba.ru (6 lessons)
    QIP 2010 (5 lessons)
    How to make money on SMS. Review of the A1 Aggregator service (10 lessons)
    Internet bank "Alfa-Click" (8 lessons)
    Yandex.Maps (10 lessons)

    I was surprised at how much I don’t know. All the pitfalls of using Internet resources have been sorted out. For example, how to effectively find information more accurately using hashtags on social networks, how to download videos from YouTube without violating copyright... In general, I highly recommend

    Buy a tutorial on OZON

    (Caution! Referral link)

    To receive your part of the commission, send me a screenshot at puchkovaa@site that you bought the book and your e-wallet number.

    Many of us have encountered the issue of searching for various information on the Internet. Almost everything, I think... The vastness and diversity of the modern Internet is difficult to describe in words. There is only room for bare numbers here. No “lyrics” can capture this “immensity”! And it’s no secret that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to search the Internet for the information we need (and sometimes, simply necessary) information. Often we are faced with a situation where we cannot find the answer to our question on the Internet.

    It’s especially difficult for beginners or those who still don’t know how to properly search the Internet.

    When you need to find something online, you have several options. Use a directory of sites, a knowledge base (for example, Wikipedia) or the services of one of the search engines. Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages, but for now we will only talk about using search engines.

    The World Wide Web has its own logic. Accordingly, the correct search for information on the Internet is subject to its own rules and laws. In order for the search to be successful, it is not necessary to be a Guru in this matter. It is enough to know a few of the most necessary rules. This alone will be of great help to you, and you will save a lot of time and nerves, which, as you know, cannot be restored... And most importantly, you will find exactly what you need!

    Let's go over the main points a little.

    Every day hundreds of new sites appear and old resources are closed for various reasons. It is absolutely impossible to do without a reliable guide. Search engines, or search engines for short, became such guides.

    There are quite a lot of search engines in the world; they can also appear, close, merge with each other, and so on. In addition to general search engines, such as Yandex, Google, Mail.ru, Yahoo!, Bing and others, there are search engines based on the database of a search engine and specializing in a specific topic, sometimes the result can be obtained easier in them and faster.

    There are two most popular general search engines on the RuNet, the domestic Yandex and the localized version of the global search engine Google. This is a fact, statistics and you can’t argue with it. Everything else is a consequence of personal preferences or the presence of various kinds of necessary specialization in a particular topic.

    And also, search engines do not perform any search on the Internet in real time at the user’s request. In short, without going into absolutes, the situation is something like this.

    There are special programs called spiders (also sometimes robots or bots) that visit sites and, following links on the pages, download their content. After this, the content of the page is indexed and entered into a special search engine database. Using special algorithms, words are assigned a certain weight and the program determines what the document is about and what query it corresponds to. Now, when a person enters his search query on the search page of this system, the program finds in its database pages that it considers suitable and displays them to the user in accordance with its ideas about the relevance of the document.

    Spider programs periodically access pages that they have already indexed in order to check their existence or changes. Thus, the search engine database is kept up to date. The frequency of access to pages, indexing and ranking algorithms are different for different search engines, so search results in different search engines may differ significantly. Therefore, it is advisable to use at least two.

    It should be taken into account that new sites usually appear in the Yandex database much slower than in Google. But the Yandex search engine has a much better understanding of the morphology of the Russian language, since it was originally designed to work with the Russian language. On the other hand, if you need to search among foreign sites, then Google's database is much larger. These features are inherent in all national search engines.

    What do Yandex and Google have in common?

    A correctly formed search query plays a decisive role in search results. The general rule for any search engine is to compose a query in the most concise and concise form. This requires some experience: if you ask a question that is too general, you will be bombarded with results that are off-topic, and if you ask a question that is too specific, you may not find anything.

    However, search engines have recently become somewhat wiser and now, when you type your search query in the browser, as you type, you are shown various options for frequently occurring queries, you can select one of them or enter your own option. Sometimes this helps out when you can’t formulate it yourself right away. The search query is not case-sensitive and usually discards punctuation marks, prepositions, and very common words.

    These are the basic search rules that most novice Internet users limit themselves to. However, Internet search engines offer advanced functionality that greatly facilitates and speeds up the search for the necessary information.

    That is, many problems can be solved by competently composing search queries using the capabilities provided by the operators themselves!

    How to properly search for information on the Internet.

    It is enough to know a few techniques for using Yandex or Google. There are methods that not all active users of the World Wide Web know about.

    How to find the exact phrase

    To ensure that the search engine understands that you are looking for a specific phrase or form of a word, enclose it in quotation marks. For example: “I’m writing to you.”

    How to find a quote with a missing word

    A quote is on the tip of your tongue, but you can't remember the missing word? Place the phrase in quotation marks and indicate the missing word with an asterisk. For example: “I’m coming to you * what more.”

    When you type words in the search bar using a vertical slash - |, the search engine will find pages that contain any of these words “either-or”. For example: mushrooms | meat | fish.

    How to find words in one sentence

    It is enough to connect the words with an ampersand - &. Google will find pages where the words you search for are used in the same sentence. For example: Black Sea & hotel.

    How to find a page or document that contains a specific word

    It is enough to put a plus in front of the desired word without a space, and this word will become mandatory. For example: Monument to Pushkin + boulevard.

    How to exclude a word from a search

    To exclude one or more words from the search, precede it with a minus sign without a space. For example: Pirates of the Caribbean - watch - online.

    How to find a word or group of words on a specific site

    To do this, before the site address you need to write the word site and put a colon after it. For example: site:mnogotolka.. It should be remembered that information recently added to the site may not yet be indexed by the spider and will accordingly be absent from the search results.

    How to search for documents of a specific type

    If you need a document of a specific type - pdf or doc, use the mime operator (with a colon after it). For example: abstract on (topic) mime:doc.

    How to search sites in a specific language

    The lang operator (with a colon) will help you. Enter the phrase you are looking for in the address bar, and after lang enter the desired language - Russian - ru, Ukrainian - uk, Belarusian - be, English - en, French - fr, German - de. For example: dreamweaver cs6 lang:ru.

    Using a tilde before a word adds pages with its synonyms to the search results, for example, the query “∼fast Internet” also includes documents with the phrase high-speed Internet.

    I'm familiar! we indicate that we want to know exact information for a particular word. For example, when searching for the query!table, we will see an exact match for this word without word forms. That is, the search will not display various forms of the word “table” - tables, tables, tables, about tables, etc.

    Searching for any of the words on Google is done using the English word OR. The search query “computer for beginners OR dummies” will search for pages containing at least one of the words separated by the conjunction OR.

    The Google search engine also has a graphical advanced search so as not to remember advanced search operators, and can also offer voice search.

    It seems to me that it would be unnecessary to explain about safe search - it all depends on what exactly you are looking for (and whether your offspring have access to the computer).

    In addition, Internet search engines allow you to specify the search area. If you need to search for an image, simply go to the Pictures tab and enter your search. The search results will only contain images that, in the opinion of the search engine, most closely match your search query. In addition to images, you can search for videos, news, blogs, and so on. A full list of available options is presented on the search page of a specific search engine.

    These are just some of the most common operators; they can also be combined with each other, and parentheses are used to write complex expressions.

    But the use of even these techniques already makes a very significant difference in search results, and can help significantly.

    The methods given are the simplest. There are many special operators that expand the possible search settings. Moreover, in different search engines they may differ slightly and this must be taken into account.

    In general, the topic of correctly composing search queries is quite complex; it is not for nothing that entire books are written about it (after all, there is also image search, live search, and the ability to use various filters). But simply by applying the above methods you can achieve good and quick results.

    Not all of us require a professional level of knowledge in this area. At the very least, the information provided is quite enough to understand the essence of things related to searching for information on the Internet. And everyone will determine the necessary depth of knowledge in the topic presented for review.

    16.Searching for information on the Internet

    The information posted on the World Wide Web amounts to a huge number of bytes. To search for information on the World Wide Web, special websites are used - information retrieval systems. They allow you to use keywords to find information resources related to keywords. This can be text containing keywords, or a graphic image of one of the keywords. Examples of information retrieval systems are Google and Yandex systems.

    Search for information– one of the most popular tasks in practice that any Internet user has to solve.

    There are three main ways to search for information on the Internet:

    1. Specifying the page address.

    3. Contacting a search engine (search server).

    Method 1: Specifying the page address

    This is the fastest search method, but it can only be used if you know exactly the address of the document or the site where the document is located.

    Don’t forget the ability to search the web page open in the browser window (Edit-Find on this page...).

    This is the least convenient method, since it can be used to search for documents that are only close in meaning to the current document.

    Method 3: Accessing a search engine

    Using hypertext links, you can travel endlessly in the information space of the Internet, moving from one web page to another, but if you consider that many millions of web pages have been created in the world, it is unlikely that you will be able to find the necessary information on them in this way.

    Special search engines (also called search engines) come to the rescue. Search server addresses are well known to everyone who works on the Internet. Currently, the following search servers are popular in the Russian-speaking part of the Internet: Yandex (yandex.ru), Google (google.ru) and Rambler (rambler.ru

    Search system- a website that provides the ability to search for information on the Internet.

    Most search engines search for information on World Wide Web sites, but there are also systems that can search for files on FTP servers, products in online stores, and information in Usenet newsgroups.

    According to the operating principle Search engines are divided into two types: search directories and search indexes.

    Search directories serve for thematic search.

    The information on these servers is structured by topics and subtopics. If you intend to cover a specific topic, it is not difficult to find a list of web pages dedicated to it.

    A directory of Internet resources or a directory of Internet resources or simply an Internet directory is a structured set of links to sites with a brief description of them.

    Search indexes work as alphabetical indexes. The client specifies a word or group of words that characterizes his search area and receives a list of links to web pages containing the specified terms.

    The first search engine for the World Wide Web was Wandex, a now-defunct index developed by Matthew Gray of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993.

    How does a search index work?

    Search indexes automatically, using special programs (web spiders), scan Internet pages and index them, that is, they enter them into their huge database.

    Search robot(“web spider”) is a program that is an integral part of a search engine and is designed to crawl Internet pages in order to enter information about them (keywords) into the search engine database. At its core, the spider most closely resembles a regular browser. It scans the contents of the page, uploads it to the server of the search engine it belongs to and sends it via links to the following pages.

    In response to a request where to find the necessary information, the search server returns a list of hyperlinks leading to web pages on which the necessary information is available or mentioned. The list can be of any extent, depending on the content of the request.

    http://www.yandex.ru/

    Yandex- Russian Internet search system. The company's website, Yandex.ru, was opened on September 23, 1997. The company's head office is located in Moscow. The company has offices in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Odessa and Kyiv. The number of employees exceeds 700 people.

    The word “Yandex” (consisting of the letter “Ya” and part of the word index; a play on the fact that the Russian pronoun “Ya” corresponds to the English “I”) was coined by Ilya Segalovich, one of the founders of Yandex, currently serving as the company’s technical director.

    Yandex Search allows you to search the RuNet for documents in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Romanian, English, German and French, taking into account the morphology of the Russian and English languages ​​and the proximity of words in a sentence. A distinctive feature of Yandex is the ability to fine-tune the search query. This is implemented through a flexible query language.

    By default, Yandex displays 10 links on each results page; in the search results settings, you can increase the page size to 20, 30 or 50 found documents.

    From time to time, Yandex algorithms responsible for the relevance of search results change, which leads to changes in the results of search queries. In particular, these changes are aimed at combating search spam, which leads to irrelevant results for some queries.

    http://www.google.ru/

    Internet search engine leader Google occupies more than 70% of the world market. It currently registers about 50 million search queries daily and indexes more than 8 billion web pages. Google can find information in 115 languages.

    According to one version, Google is a distorted spelling of the English word googol. "Googol" is a mathematical term for one followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was first described in the book Mathematics and the Imagination by Kasner and James Newman. Google's use of the term reflects the challenge of organizing the vast amounts of information on the Internet.

    Google's interface contains a fairly complex query language that allows you to limit your search to specific domains, languages, file types, etc.

    http://www.rambler.ru/

    Rambler Media Group is an Internet holding company that includes as services a search engine, a rating classifier of Russian Internet resources, and an information portal.

    Rambler was created in 1996.

    The Rambler search engine understands and distinguishes between words in Russian, English and Ukrainian. By default, the search is carried out using all forms of the word.