Grandma Betty's Recipe for Finding Anything on the Internet
Can it be that too much of a good thing can be a problem? Well, the Internet currently contains over 50 million documents and by far the most frequently asked type of questions I get from visitors to
Grandma Betty Corner are, "Grandma can you help me find information on an obscure vaudeville team from 1926", or, "Grandma I am looking for an old long lost friend. Can you find her for me?" Both are easy to accomplish, if you know how. These searching problems are the same type almost everyone encounters when they start using the Internet. Because of its sheer size and richness of information the Internet is overwhelming. It is already the largest storehouse of information ever created and it is growing every minute. In this article I am going to help you master the art of finding that proverbial 'needle in a haystack' on the
Internet. I will let you in on the tools which I have found to be the best on the net. When you finish you will be able to cut quickly through lots of 'noise' on the
Internet so you can find just what you are looking for.
The challenge in finding the information you are seeking is that the Internet, unlike a library, is not neatly indexed in one particular fashion. Hundreds of thousands of new web sites come online every day. The Internet has no card catalog where you go to find the information you need. So what do you do?
Your success in finding information on the Internet starts with you clearly defining to yourself exactly what you are looking for. The more exact and less vague you can be the better your chance of success will be. Next, you must know the proper tool to use to find the information you are seeking. The search tool you are using should have a broad index of web sites and good features allowing you to specify your exact terms. Search features vary greatly, as does the actual scope, size, and accuracy of the databases.
I have tried over 100 search engines and here are a few of my favorites as well as some interesting tricks I use which allow me to find most anything on the Internet.
Grandma's Tips for Finding Web Sites:
www.Yahoo.com is one of the best and most popular search engines. While it contains only about 1,000,000 sites it is not nearly the largest but because it is categorized by human beings (rather than a computerized robot) who visit each site to make sure that information is put into the proper category it is often the easiest and most accurate way to find the site you are looking for. I use it often.
There are two ways to effectively search Yahoo. One is to type in a search term and the related web sites will be produced. The other is to search by category. For example if you were searching for information on the Super Bowl you could either type in the term Super Bowl in the search box or find the category football and then drill down to Super Bowl within the category.
www.Altavista.com is one of the larger search engines. Altavista claims to have indexed nearly every page on the Internet. It does this by dispatching a computerized robot which visits web pages and indexes each word on the page. Because it is so large you should use the Altavista Advanced Search feature to bring up a manageable number of results. For example if you were searching for information about the rose you would input "flowers and roses" in the search box. This would only bring back web sites which contained both the words flowers and roses greatly enhancing the chance of finding the information you are seeking. In contrast, a search on just the search term "Roses" would bring up sites containing people named Rose, sites with the term "a rose by any other name...", rose colored glasses, etc.. You would wind up with thousands of irrelevant sites.
www.Hotbot.com is a good search engine for experienced Internet users. It is one of the largest in terms of the size of its database.
www.Google.com is another excellent search engine
www.DogPile.com one of the lesser known search engines but highly effective. I found out about DogPile by asking many visitors to my web site how they found my site. Many times the answer was DogPile. I thought they were joking but I visited www.DogPile.com and found a search engine which simultaneously searches other search engines including Yahoo!, Thunderstone, Lycos' A2Z, GoTo.com, Mining Co., Excite Guide, PlanetSearch, What U Seek, Magellan, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, Excite and AltaVista.
Grandma's tip for finding a company on the web: To quickly find a company on the web try URL guessing. Most large companies have secured a domain name (the www.whatever.com) which matches their company name. Often they pay lots of money if someone else has already registered the domain. In fact, some people purposely register popular domain names in the hope of making money selling it back to a company. If you are looking for Chase Manhattan Bank - type www.chase.com, if you are looking for Coca Cola - type www.cocacola.com, looking for MTV type www.MTV.com. You get the idea. It works most of the time.
True Search Story: My daughter-in-law Debbie is an avid Beanie Baby collector. At one point she was trying to get in touch with Ty Corporation. Ty is the manufacturer of Beanie Babies and because of their popularity does not have a listed telephone number. It is impossible to call or visit them. In fact a national TV news show tried to reach them and could not. Call information and you will not get a telephone number. Visit the Ty web site - no telephone number. What I did was to go to www.Internic.net. I was able to find out the telephone number of Ty because they must list it there when they registered www.ty.com. A call to the number got her right through to Ty. Having trouble reaching a company? Try a Whois search on www.Internic.net.
Grandma's recipe for finding people: Have you been trying to find a long lost love? Maybe you just want to save money not having to call the operator for a telephone number. There are a number of good people finders on the Net. I use Yahoo People Search (www.yahoo.com). It allows me to put in a first and last name and find a friend's email address. I also can find his or her telephone number from a national telephone database of listed telephone numbers. It really works. Try it.
If you are looking for high school friends from years gone by try www.classmates.com. There is no cost to register.
Grandma's recipe for travel directions and maps: www.Mapquest.com has printable maps and driving directions. You can print detailed directions from point A to point B. Even though I do not have the greatest sense of direction I recently used it on a trip from Queens to Cape Cod with great success.
Grandma's recipe for finding answers FAST: A great way to quickly find answers to most any question you may have is by mining Newsgroups. Newsgroups can be a gold mine of information. A Newsgroup is a place where people post questions and get answers. There are over 10,000 different Newsgroups. Everything from bowling to investing to sewing has a newsgroup. Every day thousands of questions are asked and answered in the Newsgroups. Recently, one of my dear friends was researching a rare form of cancer. He had a great deal of difficulty finding any information. By searching the Newsgroups not only did I find lots of information but I was able to put him in contact with people who had valuable first-hand information. The best way to search the newsgroups is by using www.dejanews.com. You can either put in a search term and every post containing that word will be listed and you can read it OR you can search by a category. For example, you can access the Investing Newsgroup and browse through thousands of messages about stocks and bonds. I hope these tips and resources will make it a bit easier for you to find that nugget of information you are looking for.
Betty Fox is the Founder of Grandma Betty's Corner. She can be reached by email at GrandmaBetty@igrandparents.com. She welcomes all questions and comments.