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Tips on How to Search the Internet
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Here's a step-by-step guide on searching the Internet:
| Step | Description |
Example: Social Psychology at Stanford |
| 1. | In the lower search field on SPN's home page, type some words that are likely to be found only in the web pages you seek.
| stanford psychology department social |
| 2. | Enclose any phrases in quotation marks. | stanford "psychology department" social |
| 3. | Use OR (in capital letters) to search for one term or another. | stanford "psychology department" "social OR personality" |
| 4. | Use a minus sign (-) to eliminate any undesired terms from the search. | stanford "psychology department" "social OR personality" -courses |
| 5. | Click the lower "Quick Search" button to get your results. | |
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Additional tips on searching:
- The Internet search is not case sensitive, so a search of "stanford" and "Stanford" will yield the same results.
- Unless otherwise specified, all terms are treated as though they are connected by the word AND (that is, a conjunctive search is conducted for all terms listed).
- If you get too many results:
- Be sure that all phrases are enclosed in quotation marks
- Add an unusual word or phrase that is specific to the searched topic
- Capitalize titles, names, and other proper nouns when appropriate
- Use a minus sign (-) to exclude undesired terms
- If you get too few results:
- Check your spelling to rule out typographical errors
- Add more search terms (e.g., zimbardo in the example above)
- Add synonyms or alternate spellings (e.g., phil philip phillip)
- Place a tilde ("~") right in front of any term to search for its synonyms
- If you are looking for the answer to a question, search for answer phrases (e.g., "the deadline is") rather than question phrases (e.g., "when is the deadline for").
- If you want to restrict your search to a specific domain (e.g., stanford.edu), you can specific it by typing "site:domain name" after your search terms. For instance, in the example above you might try searching for:
"psychology department" social site:www.stanford.edu
How the Internet search works:
The Internet search is conducted through Google.com, arguably the best search engine ever developed. Google's order of results is partly determined by its PageRank algorithm. According to Google:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."
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