Nothing is Left Here

The Internet today is a growing database of knowledge. But as with almost anything in life there are some negative things attached to this aspect of the Internet.

First, the Internet is not a simple encyclopedia, ie a database of knowledge organized. The Internet is more like a database so disorganized that everybody can contribute. Because of the diverse and extensive information input and an obligation to find specific information when you need it, there is a need for some sort of organization to the Internet community. Today there are web directories and search engines as two of the most useful mechanisms responsible for end of the Internet.

Web directories organize links to many sites on the Internet where information about a specific topic can be found. Web directories can have an overall theme or special attention and are usually organized into several categories based on the theme. Web directories are good sources of information, although it maintained with periodic updates. It is generally better to maintain human actions that automated software. Computers still can not determine the relevance of certain text as effectively humans. A good example of a human being is edited directory dmoz - Open Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org). It is the largest and most comprehensive human-edited directory on the Internet, maintained by thousands of volunteer editors.

Search engines are another tool that helps you find information on the Internet. There are many search engines on the Internet, but the largest and most popular are Google, AOL / Netscape, Lycos and MSN. Some of them also have their own web directories, which often consists of dmoz data combined with their own data.

Search engines, however, are different from web directories. Do not categorize links to Web sites such as directories, but which do allow users to "search the Internet using specific search terms. However, it is worth noting that what really is being sought at the time to send your query (in the form of a search term) is in fact a database. These databases are constantly updated and upgraded with so-called "spiders search engines' search on the Internet all the time looking for new and recently updated websites.

So what search engines can help you do is find pages that contain, and are most relevant to the search term you have used. To determine the relevancy of a page for the search term, using complex algorithms that are not fully revealed to the public. The reason for this is that these algorithms, once known to public order, could be used to adjust the classification of a site, ignoring the fact that the website content must be relevant to what people are looking for. Search engines for visitors want to return to their websites and, therefore, need to provide quality. This quality is relevant to the results of a visitor's search inquiry.

With the basic operation of web directories and search engines now explained, what are effective ways to use them to obtain relevant information?

Here are a few simple tricks that many people do not know when searching the Internet for information using various search engines. Let's look at Google, because at the time Google (http://www.google.com) is the most popular, and many thought the most comprehensive, search engine.

When you look at something Google can get a variety of results, some more and some less relevant to the original investigation search. For example, you may end up with results from various newspaper articles that merely mention the search term, but the content may be totally unrelated to the search inquiry. A good technique to minimize the results are unrelated out "intitle:" or "allintitle:" before your search terms.

The "intitle:" option is used when you search for a single word search term and anything you write after that word will not be affected by the intitle option. So if you want a phrase that will be affected by the intitle option that will use "allintitle:" instead. For example, "intitle: cars" but "allintitle: used cars" (without the quotes). Note that there should be no space between the colon and your search term.

A similar effect can be achieved with the options "inurl:" and "allinurl:" but here Google will restrict the results to show only the results where the URLs contain the word or phrase you have searched.

If you're looking for a definition of a term, Google offers help here too. You have to write "define:" (without the quotes), followed by the word or words you want defined. If Google has reached such a definition on the Internet that will be displayed for you at the top of search results. Note that if you enter more words after "define:" Google will see those words as a phrase.

When you have a URL of a site that interests you (eg www.example-url.com) you can find all sites that link to that site, all associated websites (similar) to that site and check what information Google has on that site.

You will use "link:" followed by the URL of your choice (eg "link: www.example-url.com" - without the quotes) if you want to find all sites that link to that site. The prefixes "related" and "info:" are used in the same way.

If you want to search for a particular site, not the entire Internet, you can use "site:" We continue with the website you want to find. But note that the search term here comes before the "site:" it is followed by the website. For example, "Linux download site: www.linux.org".

The only time that the quotes used in searching is when you're looking for a phrase and not combined with any of those prefixes. For example, "Searching the Internet" with quotes are looking for the exact phrase and "Searching the Internet" without quotes looking for places where the words "search", "la" and "Internet" does not appear that in strict order. Logically using quotes in the search results will get less but more relevant, while without the use of the quotes will arrive more, but usually less relevant results.

This explanation and these little tricks to help you use the Internet more efficiently in the search for information and improve the quality and relevance of its search results.