Fielded Search
A very good way to narrow a search is to look for your search term in a particular field: the title of a document, the domain of the site or even the URL.
Title
If you are searching for information about "anti personnel land mines",
the chances are better that pages that have land mines in the title will
provide more in-depth treatment than if the phrase merely occurs somewhere
on the page.
The title of a page is the line you see at the top of the browser window. For example, the title of this page is WSG Research - Search syntax and web search strategies.
By limiting your search to the title, you are taking aim at what the document is about. Be sure to try a few synonyms, as the author may have used different words for the same subject or different spellings: landmines instead of "land mines".
Most search engines have a search form where one can stipulate a title search. Several will also accept a search command. For example, at Google, Yahoo, Bing and Exalead you can enter intitle:your-word-or-phrase; such as intitle:landmines or intitle:"landmines agreement".
Domain
Domain operates at two levels: country or type of organization, and the
domain of the organization or company itself.
- Often you may want results for a particular country: uk for United Kingdom, fr for France, ca for Canada)
- Or type of web site (edu for schools in the U.S., gov for US government, com for companies and businesses, org for non-profit).
There are often search forms where country can be picked from a list. At some search engines we can use a command prefix as a shortcut. Use site:uk, as a way to limit the search to sites in the United Kingdom. (Works for Google, Yahoo, Ask, Bing, Exalead, and Gigablast)
Site
We can narrow the search to a Web site - this is the domain of the organization.
utoronto.ca, as an example, is the domain of the University of Toronto.
site:utoronto.ca will search only that site.
URL
URL can be a useful field to search when you can target some standard
naming conventions. Many weblogs and news sites have 'archives' in the
url. For example -- site:websearchguide.ca inurl:archives kosmix
finds entries about the Kosmix search engine from the WebSearchGuide weblog
for Internet News
You can also take a chance and look for a word in the URL. Format for this is usually inurl:word. For example, we might look for inurl:shakespeare to find pages that have shakespeare in the host name or part of the filename or directory path.
Date
At Yahoo, Google, and Ask.com you can limit the selection of pages to
a choice of time periods.
At Exalead, you can request documents "modified after" a certain date, and also sort search results to get the newest first.
Unfortunately, dates on web pages are notoriously bad. Most of the time the search engine uses the date the page was last spidered, which bears little resemblence to the day it was last updated.
TIP: You need good crib
sheets to keep straight what you can do where. Be sure to use the WSG
Search Engine Comparison Chart, and the WSG
Search Guides for detail on syntax and options.
Fielded Search Exercise
-
Go to Google (www.google.com). Search for pages that are about the battles of Gallipoli from the Australian point of view. (ie search for gallipoli in the title, battles anywhere, and .au for Australia in the domain). Check your search construction against the syntax answer page.
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Next, use Yahoo (search.yahoo.com) to search for landmines or "land mines" in the title and banning anti-personnel anywhere else. (Hint: intitle:apples OR intitle:oranges.) Check your search construction against the syntax answer page.
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Construct the query at Exalead (www.exalead.com/search) and try some different combinations. Note the difference in number of results and the display. Check the syntax answer page.
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Run the same search at Live (search.live.com). Note the difference in number of results and the display. Check the syntax answer page.
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Use the Advanced Search form at Ask.com (below the search box) to look for articles about banning anti-personnel land mines from the last three months. [Syntax answer page]
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Use Google to look for information about diabetes at the Health Canada site (www.hc-sc.gc.ca). [syntax answer page]
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Substitute your own questions but be sure to experiment with the field searching at all the engines.
Where to Next?
Search engines will index many filetypes. Learn how to limit or to exclude a Filetype.