SHARK

BY MIKI THOMAS

ith so much informa-
tion available on the
World Wide Web,

searching it can be overwhelm-
ing — especially using a
search engine.

Say you are looking for
sites about depression glass.
You plug in “depression glass”
and wind up with a gazillion
hits for “depression,” another

a few hits actually about
“depression glass.” It is
enough to send you into a cata-
tonic fit.

However, there are some
ways to use search engines to
your advantage and actually
find what you want.

Search engines are basically
searchable databases of site
information gathered from the
web. Given the huge number
of sites on the web, it’s impos-
sible for humans to manually
scavenge for new ones. A robot
called a “spider” or’ “crawler”

. is sent out to do the job.

Depending on how the spider
is programmed to record infor-
mation, addresses of websites are
usually filed based on title and
the first few words of each page.
This is useful information
because your search results
depend on this filing system;
sometimes your hits will list sites
complete unrelated to your topic
except for one word in the title. .

gazillion for “glass,” and only’

About the only human ele-
ment in this process comes
when some of these sites are
put into categories in a
wébguide, which is often
found in the opening page ofa
search engine.

The best resource on search
engines (sadly, the only one
l’ve been able to find) is
Search Engines for the World
Wide Web by Alfred and Emily
Glossbrenner. It covers major

search. engines such as Alta '

Vista, Yahoo, and Excite as
well as specialized-ones such
as Deja News, which searches
Usenet newsgroups, and
Fourll, the email and tele-
phone directory. The most
helpful aspect of the book is its
collection of quick reference
charts for \ many search
engines; they clearly demon-
strate how search engines work
differently.

For instance, some search
engines are menu-driven — a
user clicks on category names
to narrow down the search.
Most, however, let the user
start a search using keywords
and phrases.

To fine—tune a keyword

search and reduce hits, you can,
use restrictive terms including‘

AND, OR, and NOT.
Depending on the search
engine, you can substitute + or
— for AND or NOT, while a
space between words or phras-
es indicates OR. Be careful
about actually writing out

AND, OR, NOT: in Excite and
some other engines, doing so
turns off its concept-based
approach to searching.

Other ways the bigger
search engines let users fine-
tune searches include Alta
Vista’s field search, which
searches based on title or host,
and Hot Bot’s “meta words”
feature which can restrict a
search according to domain-or
web site feature.

Using advanced searching A

techniques can be tedious —
you may not get what you want
on the first try. It does take

practice to get the keywords

and search request just right.
Some search engines allow for
plain English search requests,
so you can actually ask a ques-
tion to start asearch: “Where
can I find information on
speaker systems?”. However,
l’ve found that sometimes
doesn’t always work as it
should; you can still ‘wind up
with many irrelevant hits.
Perhaps the easiest way to
search is through specialized
search engines. Their databases
are smaller, so your chances of
finding what you want are
greater. There ', re three search
engines providing information
for the GLBT'lcommunity:

Gayscape, Rainbow Query and i

a new one called
Gaylnsider.com.
Gayscape is mostly for men,

with a webguide including
such topics as Bear Photos and

Leathermen Personal‘ Pages,"

but it does offer a searchable
database of more than 52,000
GLBT websites. It offers you a
choice of a menu-driven search
or keyword search. Plus, if you
have a website yourself,
Gayscape allows you to add it
to its database.

Rainbow Query also offers
both menu-driven and keyword
searches. I found both to be
easy to navigate, with only a
few dead links in the results.

Gaylnsider.com is new; as
such, it has a number of bugs it
needs to work out before it can
be a useful tool. Its user inter-
face and webguide topics are
suspiciously similar to
Yahoo’s. However,

“Commun"ity,”” "hia’s'”‘_ only" i a‘
handful of sites under such top-
ics as ‘‘politics’’ and “people.” I
next decided to check out its
“In The News” section, click-
ing on “Matthew Shepard.” I
wound up with a “404 Site Not
Found” message. This site def-
initely needs work.

If using search engines is
too frustrating for you, try
Internet or World Wide Web
guide books such as Harley
Hahn’s World Wide Web Yellow
Pages. For GLBT web surfers,
Jeff D_awson’s Gay and
Lesbian Online is now in its
third edition with more than
3300 Internet and websites list-
ed. V

the hot list

Alta Vista

Yahoo

Deja News
www.dejanew
Fourll

Gaylnsider.com does not have
Yahoo’s number of websites
available on its database. I tried
searching for sites on “reli-
gion,” a hot topic among the
GLBT community, and came
up with nothing. It turns out
that the webguide category it
would belong to,

www.aItavista.digita| . ‘O

Miki Thomas has a Masters
in Library Science from SUN Y
Albany and has been “wired”
since 1994. She has been a
contributing writer for OITM
for nearly 8 years.

a. zippo. zi

 

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