Week of November 22nd

On November 22nd in College Research English Class, I learned how to perform a basic search. I learned that search engines often differ in how they perform a basic search. It is good idea to view each engine's Help page before using it. I learned that an effective search statement at one search engine might not produce the best results at another. I can overcome these inconsistencies by using a trial-and-error approach to searching. At each of the search engines, i can try subtle variations on the search by changing my wording slightly. A tip to perform a basic search is to note which search engines perform best for different kinds of searches. 

On November 23rd in College Research English Class, I learned why search results vary with different search engines. A search engine spider scans the Internet for Web pages and it only finds a fraction of the Web pages that exist for any given topic. Each of the engines spiders crawl in different parts of the Web and a different scope of content. When I use a different range search engine, I am actually searching a slightly different part and a slightly different range of the Web. I also learned that each search engine has unique ranking algorithms. Therefore, when my results are ranked for relevancy, different search engines might list similar results in a different order.