- Search engines designed by educational institutions and companies are used to organize information and allow users to search for specific keywords
- Generally return too much irrelevant info, so you need to use their advanced search capabilities. Every search engine has a link right at the top to search tips, and another one to their Advanced Search (or Power Search) page (may also be called More Search Options). Follow that link, avoid having to use complex syntax, and get better results!
- Links listed by search engines are frequently outdated. Search for new pages!
- Bookmark the advanced search pages of your favorite search engines!
- Use personal search assistants on your PC or Mac that search several engines at a time, such as Copernic 98
or WebFerret. These free, fast utilities can even store a search for you and re-do it regularly, so you receive updates on your search channels.
- Considered one of the most popular search sites
- Web Page owners subscribe to the service and register their site under the proper category; Yahoo! experts check the site for relevance
- To search in Yahoo!, you must type in keywords for the site you're looking for
- You can narrow the search by having Yahoo! search only in specific categories that are listed on the search page (this is Yahoo!'s main distinction from other search sites)
- Yahoo!'s results are always displayed with the category preceding the link to the website, so you can quickly find other pages from the same category
- Use Double Quotes Around Words that are Part of a Phrase
This reduces the number of hits when you find too many irrelevant pages, but can cost you a lot of relevant hits as well! This technique works best when looking for a specific title, such as a book.
- Try various spellings
This can help you find more results when your search was not productive enough (people might have different ideas how to spell something)
Yahoo! first displays its categories, then websites listed in its own database (link: "web sites"). It also invokes the Inktomi search engine to find further matches on the web (this used to be done via AltaVista). These pages are called "web pages" and have not been checked by Yahoo! experts for their relevance. Inktomi searches for words within the title, body, and META-information of web pages. Unlike Yahoo!, Inktomi is not category-specific
(see advanced search techniques for details on this)