The World of Grandpa Don
Getting Good Search Results
This web site and the St. Julie web site have search engines to help visitors find subjects of interest. The providers of these utilities also aid me by creating reports which show the words or phrases visitors enter and the results of these searches. In this way, I can modify my pages to include synonyms when necessary. As an example, we had information on "Marriage" on the St Julie pages but people were searching for "wedding".
The other thing these reports have revealed is that people do not know how to search. The computer is a very dumb device. When you type home run you will get every instance of the words home and run that appears on the site. Use quotes to narrow down the search, for example, "home run".
Search engines do not read pictures or graphics, just text. So you can not search for "Picture of Jane Smith". If the picture has a caption with "Jane Smith" included, you can find it with a search for "Jane Smith".
Search engines do not have spell checkers, and being dumb devices they rely on us to enter words that exactly match the text on the web site. A recent search included a phrase with all the words run together. That will not work.
Some search engines do have 'advanced search' features and include a "sounds like" feature. However, you must go to the "Advanced Search" and select that feature. Advance Search also allows selections such as looking for "exact phrase", "all the words" or "any of the words". Use The Search Tips for more information.
Just like anything else, to get benefits there must be some effort on our part. There are no short cuts. Some people, thinking that the internet is for speed of communication, tend to be sloppy in chat rooms and email. Like anything else, this can become a habit and spill over to other aspects of our lives. To develop good habits in life we can not perpetuate bad habits in any part of our lives. The subconscious mind will retain them and perpetuate them.
Don Plefka
5/23/02
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Getting Good Search Results |
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The
World of Grandpa Don www.plefka.net |
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by The JavaScript Source | |
