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Welcome
Ed – Jonathan Burnside

Welcome to volume 2 issue: 1 of LSM. In this issue we have a very useful article about getting the most out of search engines. Searching for what you want on the web can be very frustrating to say the least. However, this is normally a result of being too vague with our searches. With so many websites out there we have to be precise with our searches, targeting exactly what we want. The ‘Get the Most out of Search Engines’ article shows us how to make the most out of search engines, resulting in time savings and less stress.

Our second article looks at the battle between Google and Microsoft. These were once two company’s working in separate areas, but the boundaries are getting smaller and smaller forcing them to compete on each others turf.

Please keep sending us feedback and letting us know which subjects you would like us to cover.

Get the Most out of Search Engines
by Jonathan Burnside ©2005

The web is full of information and will usually have what you are looking for. The question is ‘If you do find what you’re looking for, how long will it take?’

Of course everyone knows that the best way of finding information on the internet is through the use of a search engine such as Yahoo, Google, Dmoz etc… When a user enters their search words the search engine accesses an index of websites, which has been built up overtime, to bring the user results that relate to the search words.

Finding the exact information you want can be very difficult due to the number of websites in existence. For example: if I wanted to search for ‘website design’ on Google I would be presented with 40,000,000 results, out of which I would have to find the ones that were useful to me.

The reason Google would present 40,000,000 results is because it would show me all the websites that contained both or any of the words I used in the search.

There are numerous techniques that can be employed to make your search more effective, which in-turn will greatly reduce the time you are searching. For example if I had put “” marks around the search like this: “website design” it would have told the search engine to only bring back results that contained that particular phrase, reducing the number of results to 8,570,000 a reduction of 80%.

Below is a table of ‘Operators’ and how to use them in your searches:

Operator	Usage
+	Lets say you wanted to find a website designer in your area, you could use the + operator in the following way “website design” + yourarea. If you wish you can also AND instead of +.
-	If you wanted to find a website designer but wanted to exclude a certain area you could use the – operator in the following way “website design” – excludedarea. If you wish you can use NOT instead of -.
( )	Brackets are used in some search engines. If I was to put brackets around my search words ie (website design) then the search engine would pull up only results that contained these two words, but not necessarily in the same phrase.
" "	Quote marks are used to search for a particular phrase as illustrated earlier.

Remember you can use more than one operator in a search, allowing you to target the exact results that you want.

There are also certain words that most search engines ignore; these are normally small words such as: ‘of’, ’for’, ‘in’, ‘a’, ‘at’ etc…

It is also important to note that most of the search engines also have tips pages that can help the user make their searches more fruitful. They also normally have an ‘Advanced’ option allowing the user to make more complicated searches, but now you know how to use the above operators you shouldn’t need to use this option - you’ll be able to conduct advanced searches all by yourself.

Google has grown in such a short space of time that a few years ago pundits would never have guessed they would try to take on the giant Microsoft. Search technology is something at Google’s core but in recent times they have become restless and are starting to move into new areas.

One of the reasons things are heating up between Microsoft and Google, is that the computer desktop is one of the areas Google is targeting. This of course has always been Microsoft’s territory and the giant is suddenly sitting up and taking notice. Google’s bold approach could really pose a huge threat because it is Microsoft’s control of the user environment through its popular operating systems that is at stake.

At the moment the majority of computer users store their information and emails on the machine they are using. Google want to change all this… They want users to start storing their information and emails in dedicated web-based areas. By doing this they can create search functions that can be accessed from anywhere, on any device using any operating system. This vision of Google’s is giving Microsoft sleepless nights because they know that it could mean less reliance on their operating systems by totally changing the ball park.

There are already battles happening, these battles being fought over free email and web based searching. The likes of Yahoo are also joining in on the action. In fact Yahoo are beginning to catch Google in the popularity stakes, and as they are heading the same way as Google could also pose big problems to Microsoft.

All this is good news to the consumer because it will result in better products and a lot more choice. Evidence of this can be seen now. When Google announced the advent of its free email service ‘Gmail’ Microsoft came back and announced it was increasing the memory on all its Hotmail accounts.

Anyway keep a close eye on developments between Google and Microsoft because things are lightly to heat-up even further in the coming months.

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Vol 2, Issue 1: Friday,28th January 2005