Re: Any Searching ideas?

[Christine Chiu <pitsco@PITSCO.COM>]

>We are having difficulty conducting  a "boolean" search that will help us
>to narrow down the topic that the search tool is looking for.  We are using
>Webcrawler, Yahoo, and Lycos.  Although each tool has an options area for
>"AND"/Boolean searching, they don't seem to filter out some of the
>unnecessary sites/hits.
>
>Does anyone have any suggestions?

It sounds like you need to narrow the key words you input. A search engine
wouldn't be doing its job if it didn't return more than you wanted it to.
You may type in the words "technology plan" while looking for  actual
documents of technology plans while another might be looking how issues
concerning technology plans. The difference is the context of  the terms in
the finder's mind.

When you are searching, look at the results that interest you. See if there
is another key word you can use in addition to the ones you are already
using and conduct a search with the more focused combination or you may
even notice entirely different words which more appropriate for what you
are looking for. Then conduct a search with those new words. Once you find
content you are interested in they often have related www links which may
not have come up as results in the search but are appropriate for what you
are looking for.

Why don't you try using different search engines than the ones you are
already using and see what works best for you. You can find more at
http://www.usa.net/~pitsco/pitsco/search.html

Christine Chiu
GUI Designer/webmaster
Pitsco Technology Education
catalog@pitsco.com
http://www.usa.net/~pitsco/