Knowing Your Search Engines

You will need to know addresses (http //www.) of the major Internet search engines. But search engines are still not perfected and the results may contain certain amount of noise, i. e, irrelevant information. Some companies use tricky things to get your attention we found many NDT related words like TOFD hidden as meta keywords in every page of some websites. If a search engine leads you to this site you will find no actual information provided, not even a single visible instance of the word TOFD. 

The next step will help you narrow down your topic even further and make it more specific. If you asked a librarian for information, or typed John F. Kennedy into a search engine on the Internet, either the librarian or the computer would pull up thousands of sources. Most likely, you don t have the time to sift through aU the pages and books that have been written about President John F. Kennedy. For that reason, you need to refine your search. Using the 5 W s as a guide, make yourself a chart and fill in all the information that you already know. For example, your chart might look like this ... 

The Internet, like any library, offers a wealfh of differenf resources. What makes the Internet so uniquely appealing is that you don t have to leave the privacy ot your desk to access materials from all over fhe world. In other words, rather than having to go to a library or other institution to seek out and investigate your sources, the Internet brings them to you. You should know fhaf some Infernef sifes and search engines are beffer fhan ofhers. This lesson will feach you fhe mosf convenienf and efficient methods tor using the Internet. 

There are many ways to optimize for keywords throughout your site. After you choose and rank your top keywords and determine which page you want to rank for each term, you need to make sure each pe e is optimized — meaning you are making it easy for a search engine to know exactly what your page is talking about. 

Search engines, with their half-baked algorithms, are closer to slot machines than to library catalogues. You throw your query to the wind, and who knows what will come back to you Perhaps one in a thousand sites might actually help you. But it s easy to be sidetracked or frustrated as you try to go through those Web pages one by one. 

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