Web Searching

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Search Example: MetaCrawler

For this example, we'll do an advanced search using MetaCrawler, a meta-search engine site. The topic for this example is zen and motorcycles. We know of a book about this topic, but can't think of the title or author, so we'll conduct a search on the WWW.

• We'll go to the MetaCrawler advanced search site at

  http://www.metacrawler.com/index_power.html

• There are many documents on the WWW concerning zen and the internet, so we'll have to filter documents containing internet out.

  We'll do a search using the +/- operators. Enter into the search box:
  

  • +zen +motorcycles -internet

  

   

• Select the region/area in which to search for your documents. We'll go ahead and search Everywhere.

  

   

• Select the area of the internet to search. Select The Web

  

   

• Click on the Search button to start the search.

   

• MetaCrawler returned 16 hits. Looking at the descriptions of the sites, we see the second one has the name of the book we're looking for: "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". The description tells us that the Infoseek engine actually returned this hit.