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Think about your topic and don’t rush to start
searching.
What kinds of words describe the topic and what words might be used when
talking about your topic. Think whether there are other resources to explore
in addition to search engines, such as industry trade organizations or
thesauri for finding similar words. If you have documents that are on that
topic, you could start searching from them within Aware.
Use more than one search engine when doing broad
research on a topic.
Search engines index different pages and do it in different ways, so you can
get more coverage by searching more than one.
Look for topic specific databases.
The “deep web” is a term that referes to those searchable
databases on websites that are not indexed by the search engines. For
example, the United States Patent and Trademark Office has a searchable
database of US Patents, only some of which are accessable through general
purpose search engines. If you find a “deep web” database you
wish Aware searched, send us an email at features@AwareSearch.com and
we’ll look into adding it.
Consider language when thinking about key terms.
US and UK English spellings sometimes differ (color vs. colour), and word
usage can be culturally biased (sweater vs. jumper). You can add all
variations to your terms list to broaden your coverage.
“Follow the Web.”
If you find a website that is particularly on topic, use
search engine tools to find out who is linking to that site, and where that
site is linking to. Follow the web to related information. You can even
search back in time using the Wayback Machine to see what the site looked
like in the past.
Check your sources.
The open web is used by all sorts of people – so try to find out
something about the people or organization who posted the content you found.
One trick is to cut off the end sections of a URL and see what makes up the
higher level pages of a site. Internic’s Whois <link to
http://www.internic.net/whois.html> can be used to find out who owns and
operates a website.
Don’t forget to search Blogs and Groups.
The banter can be very informative, even though it is individual opinions and
not always factual.
Have an Internet research tip to share?
Please email us at support@AwareSearch.com.
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