Acquiring Information: Search Engines

  1. Acquiring Information
  2. Discussion Groups

You’ll want to search both the web and Usenet for information. The web provides information on things that someone cared enough about to create a permanent page for—blogs, especially, are useful, because individual experts will blog about topics they’re following. Usenet provides late-breaking information that is currently in discussion, as well as information that was once late-breaking many years ago. Twitter also provides late-breaking information, as well as links to relevant news and blog articles.

1. http://www.google.com/

2. http://groups.google.com/

3. http://www.memeorandum.com/

4. http://www.twitter.com/

If you are looking for information about a specific product or company, go to that company’s web page. Most of them will have some sort of search engine that you can use.

Search Engines: Keywords

Start big and get smaller. Think like a computer. When looking for the address of the Law School at the University of San Diego, what you look for will depend on where you are looking for it.

In a search engine that covers the entire web, you would look up “University of San Diego Law School Address” and work from there.

In a search engine that covers the University of San Diego, look up “Law School Address”.

In a search engine that covers just the Law School, look up “mailing address” or “postal address”.

If you look up “address” on the University of San Diego search engine, you’re probably not going to find the Law School address: it will show up, but so will every other page that mentions e-mail addresses, speeches, and mailing addresses.

  1. Acquiring Information
  2. Discussion Groups