Answers
The web is such a big place, that finding useful information is sometimes not easy. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Random search tips. Before you try using a search engine, try typing the subject into your browser's address field. Supposing you are looking for travel information, try www.travel.com. You might be surprised at how effective this can be. Of course, it can also turn up to unexpected results. What do you think is at www.whitehouse.com ?
It helps to know a little about how addresses work. A lot of addresses are preceded by "www" but not all of them. Most company addresses end with "com" (commercial) but there is also "net" (internet provider), "org" (non profit organisations) and "gov" (government). Some addresses also have country qualifiers appended to them. Hence www.undp.org is the address for undp, www.nasa.gov is NASA and www.opus.co.tt is the URL for a bulletin board service in Trinidad. By the way, www.whitehouse.gov is what you expect it to be !!
Use Copernic99. Before you try a search engine, take your searches up a notch. Copernic requests responses from all the search engines at the same time, and will automatically eliminate duplicates. Your results are stored, and can be exported as html documents, e-mailed or updated with a mouse click. You can search newgroups, book titles, e-mail addresses. Buy the fully featured Copernic99 plus and scroll through even more categories including sports, entertainment, magazines, business, recipes and movies.
Narrow your search. One of the main problems with search engines is the amount of useless results that can turn up on a search. There are ways to reduce the number of wild goose chases that you might encounter.
- use quotation marks. Look for "hotels in barbados" instead of hotels is barbados.
-use" AND, & or +" when doing a search for multiple words. For example, "heart" AND "diseases" is likely to have better results than heart diseases. Sometimes, this also applies for "NOT and - (minus)". An example such as "+cruise+ships+tours-europe" will look for cruise ship tours but not in europe. "coffee" OR "tea" is a search for one or the other.
-reversing the emphasis can improve your results. A search for "new york city apartments" might be less effective than "apartments in new york city" or "+newyork+apartments".
-try using singular when possible. Search engines associate exact words or phrases with links. Try "comic" instead of "comics" to find comic magazines online.
-some search engines support a wildcard key, usually an asterisk (*). A search for "+caribbean+*+lines" would turn up caribbean "cruise" lines, "air" lines, "shipping" lines, "bus" lines or any other "something" that might fit there.
-use the "advanced options" within your search engine when your searches don't seem to be working.
Try a metasearch engine. These are "large" search engines that look content on more than search site. Some good examples is askjeeves, webcrawler and metasearch. This may turn up a lot more results than you expect.
Use the right search tool for the job. You may discover that your favorite search engine does "fine" on some topics, "well" on others and "poorly" in another. This may take some time to figure out but you won't know it if you stick to one search tool all the time. Don't be afraid to try some lesser known search tools. Take a look at our search engine page for some comparisons.
Let the content come to you.
Right now, much of the web has to be sought. There are some services based more on a "push" concept. Pointcast is a fully featured browser, which plugs into "channels" and automatically downloads content. Select the channels in which you have interests, and keep track of breaking stories in news, business, entertainment, health and the computing world. Also try Neoplanet or Alexa. Both of these products considerably extended the search capabilities of Internet Explorer by associating sites that you frequent with "channels".
Go directly to our search page
Both Netscape and Internet Explorer report a variety of messages. Have you seen these before ?
"404. URL does not exist or site is down". What this really means is the address you typed is not quite correct or the web page is not available. Recheck the address for type-O's
"302. moved temporarily". The requested page has been moved to another location. In most cases, your browser will show you an alternate URL
"204. no content". This page has no content. Try "refresh" or "reload" to make sure.
"Server has no DNS entry. Server may be down or unavailable". Either the web site you requested does not exist or the address has a type-O. Recheck the address. If you are guessing the name of the site, click here for a domain name search.
"403. permission denied". Some web sites have restricted areas which require some form of authentication. You do not access rights to the page requested.
"Plugin required". A plugin is a program which your browser co-opts to perform certain tasks. Multimedia tasks such as playing music, online games, or movie previews are good examples. If your browser reports this message, it probably means that the specified plugin is either not installed or cannot be located. In most cases, following the instructions will help you acquire the required plugin.
"500. Unable to run script". Some web sites contain scripts, or active elements that may not be supported by your browser. Use an alternate browser for this site or upgrade to latest release of your browser. You should also make sure that java support is enabled in your browser.
"fatal exception, OE error,or illegal operation". In this case, the operating system has elected to stop a process within your browser. You should power down your machine. This could an indication of a problem within your operating system, hardware or your applications. If the problem becomes persistent, you should consult your hardware vendor.
Sometimes your browser does not report any errors but fails to conjure a page.The first thing to do is to try a well known site such as your home page. If other sites are reachable, then the problem may originate with the requested site. Browsing is affected by a number of factors such as how busy the requested site is, the performance of your PC's hardware, browser, dialer and your telephone line. A slow page could be an indication of high graphical content on the page, a running script, corrupt browser cache or some other issue affecting your dialer. Hitting "stop" and "reload" can works wonders. Java scripts sometimes lock your browser into a loop and delay the page ! You also should periodically clear your browser's cache. For Internet Explorer, right click on the "e" on your desktop, choose "properties", then choose "delete temporary internet files". For Netscape 3.x, the cache value is found under "options", "network preferences". Inside Netscape Communicator, look under "edit", then "preferences" and "advanced". If your dialer stack is corrupt, try powering your machine completely off. In some cases, your windows may benefit from a dialer upgrade A noisy telephone line can force your modem to frequently "retrain" which results in to packet loss and impaired browsing. You should get the telephone company involved if the latter is the case. Please visit our connection troubleshooting guide for more details.
Have you visited to a great site but can't remember where ? Or would you like to see what your child has been looking at recently ? The answer is the browser history. In Internet Explorer, the history is locate on the toolbar. URLs are stored in domain folders sorted by date. Right click on the explorer icon on your desktop and set history expiration "general". Netscape Communicator has a much more functional history. Under "communicator", history can be sorted by location, date visited, expiration and other features. It is also very easy to create booksmarks, shortcuts on your desktop or add to the channel bar from the history. Simply select the location URL, then "file" and the desired option. You can also change the history expiration from "navigation options" within "preferences".