Starting a Search
If you're not familiar with what search engines are available, please see How to Search the World Wide Web: An Introduction. Now it's time to do an in-depth search of a topic; let's get started!
Set up your bookmark file
Netscape is probably the best browser for intensive searches as bookmark management is far easier. Click on Bookmarks  and then Edit Bookmark. 
Create a new folder in Edit Bookmarks and name it for your subject area. I'm naming mine "mudpuppies".
Drag the new folder into the Personal Toolbar folder;
this will place it on your Netscape toolbar so you can consult these links easily during or after your search.
Set this folder to be your new bookmarks folder by selecting the folder and clicking on View: Set as New Bookmarks folder.
 (Mudpuppies set as the new bookmarks folder...)
As you go through your search, whenever you find a site worth keeping, just add it to your bookmarks by clicking on Bookmarks: Add Bookmark.
Choose a search term
Recognizing that sometimes starts will be vague, your search term should be as specific as possible. Your term should be a series of keywords, ranked in order of relevancy. If there is a single phrase that should be in common usage that clearly defines your topic, use it first; put the phrase in quotation marks, i.e. "athletic shoes" (exceptions: Excite! & Lycos). If there are any words or phrases that must appear on your search result to be valid, place a plus sign (+) in front of the word or phrase with no space between it and the word or phrase.
Refinement
If your search reveals a large number of undesirable results that share some common thread, place keywords you would like to eliminate from your search preceded by a minus sign (-) in your query. Example: if you were searching for the amphibious animal commonly known as mudpuppies, you would want to attempt to exclude the rock band and the baseball team also called the mudpuppies from your results, so you might want a query that would look like +mudpuppies -band -baseball -sports. If a large number of results involve recent current events that are irrelevant, limit your search to sites dated before the event; this probably will require using HotBot or AltaVista Advanced Search to limit your search in this manner.
Start with specific terms first, then move to more general if you get no results. Word order matters on some engines; place your most important terms first. Conduct additional searches on related phrases or keyword; these may emerge from your first search results. Capitalize proper nouns but otherwise realize that the case does not matter, so you should always use lower case unless a letter should be specifically upper case.
If a URL doesn't work out and there are one or more subdirectories, try chopping off the last subdirectory in your location bar and pressing enter, i.e. if you got an error message on the URL http://www.goober.com/gomer/stuff/mudpuppygills.htm, try just http://www.goober.com/gomer/stuff/. Excite and some other engines offer a "more like this" feature; if you get a solid valid response, use it!
You can use advanced features of some engines and switch to Boolean logic (from "The Search is Over" by Adam Page):
AND
The AND operator makes sure all the terms you request appear on the selected sites. If you type Java AND JavaSoft your search will return pages about the Web's programming language, not coffee.
OR
Use OR to return pages that contain either of two terms. For example, Microsoft OR Netscape will find pages that mention either or both companies.
NOT
Use NOT to ensure that certain words won't appear in your search selections. Modems NOT internal will narrow your search to external modems. And by the way, it's AND NOT in AltaVista advanced search.
NEAR
This term finds words located within a certain number of characters of each other. Not every service uses NEAR in the same way, and some don't offer it at all. For example, AltaVista uses it to find words within ten characters of each other, while WebCrawler lets you specify the number of characters.
Parentheses
Organize your searches even further by using parentheses. NOT Intel AND Cyrix will return pages with Cyrix in them; NOT (Intel AND Cyrix) will avoid pages with both names.
NOTE: some engines allowing Boolean logic will NOT allow the + must include feature (AltaVista, for instance)
Picking a search engine
Always use the engine that you are most comfortable with first; it should be the one that you have read all of the help files for and know how to use the best. If you get satisfactory results and time is a factor, STOP. If you have no satisfactory results in your top 10 to 30 hits (your call) move to another search engine. You can use additional engines to broaden and expand your search. For company/commercial information, try Infoseek's "company profile" or AltaVista's Business Search.
Evaluating Your Search
Use your newly created bookmark file to do an in-depth review of the sites resulting from your search
- Do they meet your requirements?
- Do they suggest further or additional avenues of investigation?
- Do they contain links worth pursuing?
If necessary, refine your terms or select another search engine(s) and search again.
Payback time
Would your search results represent a better overall picture of the topic that any single existing site? If this is so, why not put up a new page to help others out in the future on this topic? Inform the creators of the pages you cite of the existence of your page. If it's good enough, make it a World Wide Web Virtual Library page by applying to be a World Wide Web Virtual Librarian; see http://www.vlib.org/ or http://vlib.org/join.html for details.
Copyright 1998, 1999 Ray Trygstad, Naperville, Illinois: Used by permission
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