It's easy to be suspicious of a book about how to use search engines. After all, search engines are designed to be simple to use: You just type in your keywords and go. Web Search Garage takes over at the far end of what is obvious, where author Tara Calishain explains how to use little-known search engines (particularly specialized ones) and unadvertised features of more famous search tools (mainly Google and Yahoo). She also describes some clever hacks that are engine independent, such as the fact that U.S. states have official URLs ending with their postal abbreviation and .us, as in .wa.us for the state of Washington. You can narrow searches usefully with that bit of knowledge. To cite another example, you can use the idea of combining Google's wildcard capability with its exact-match search capability in queries like, "there are * types of horse" to yield reasonable-sized lists of useful hits. The hints and ideas are thick in this modest-sized book, and they're consistently outside the realm of what most of us would figure out for ourselves. In browsing this book, you'll issue mental "Ah!" exclamations fairly frequently, and you'll find yourself motivated to store Web Search Garage near the place where you do most of your browsing. After it first saves you some time, you'll be reaching for it frequently to get its advice. --David Wall
Topics covered: How to find the Web pages and information you want using Google, Yahoo, and other online search resources. Search syntax, keyword selection, and little-known features of search engines all get attention.
Best-selling author and research expert Tara Calishain offers her insider tips and tricks for web searching in this title from Prentice Hall PTR's Garage Series. The book begins with an in-depth look at search engines and other online tools such as browsers. It describes several principles of web searching to help you leverage the scope of the Internet to discover information. The book also covers specific topic areas of Internet searching, both domestically and internationally. Finally, Web Search Garage includes a special technical support section to teach you how to find the support solutions you need on the Internet.
Specific topics covered include
- Search engines
- Browsers
- The principles of web searching
- Searching for news, jobs, and local information
- Finding images and audio on the web
- Searching for people
- Genealogy research
- Consumer help
- Drugs and medical information
- Kid-safe searching
Whether you're a newbie or an Internet search guru, Web Search Garage is a valuable resource for using the Internet wisely to find the information you're looking for. Calishain's thorough explanations and examples, combined with her entertaining wit will help you fine-tune your skills and search the Internet to find convenient solutions.
About the Author
About The Author
Tara Calishain is the editor of ResearchBuzz, a weekly newsletter on Internet searching. She's also a regular columnist for SEARCHER and has written for a variety of other publications. Her author/co-author credits include Google Hacks and Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Preface
In the last ten years or so I've been fascinated with the Web. And since the Web started getting large enough to require organization, I've been fascinated with how that organization has evolved. From very basic text pages and Big Red Buttons That Don't Do Anything, we've moved to extensive databases, search engines, and online information collections of all sorts. Since I wrote the Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research in 1996, the landscape has changed dramatically.
In 1996 it was possible to maintain a "big picture" idea of resources available online: even if you couldn't track down every last one you had a sense of what was available, where the gaps were, and so on. Now that's impossible. The Internet is growing too quickly. But hey, these are the kinds of problems you want to have, right? A rapidly growing collection of information, with a rapidly growing set of tools for dealing with it.
In 1996 I decided I was crazy about search engines. I loved experimenting with them, learning the syntaxes, trying to figure out how to make them work best. I'm still crazy about them. I'm almost as crazy about trying to teach other people to use the search engines, to help them take advantage of the wealth of information that's appearing online.
Thanks for buying this book. If you, too, get bitten by the search engine bug, join me over at ResearchBuzz.com. There I'll try to keep you up to date with developments in the search engine world.
Thanks for reading.
