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Searching: Find anything on the Net!

Best of the Web vs. comprehensive Web index

NetGuide Live gives you the choice of searching either our database of thousands of Web-site profiles--representing what our professional reviewers consider to be the Best of the Web--or searching a comprehensive index of the text of several million Web pages. Before you begin your search, make your selection by clicking in the circle next to your choice.

Search terms

Type the word or words you want to find (Monet, for example) or a key word that describes the concept you're seeking (impressionism, for example) into the search box, then hit the Find It button. (If you're searching for an exact phrase of two or more words, use quotation marks: "Metropolitan Museum of Art." See more on multiple word searches below.) NetGuide Live will search the names of the sites, their profiles in NetGuide Live's database, and the actual text of Web pages to return a list of sites relevant to your search.

Refining your search

Given the large number of sites in NetGuide Live's database, you might find your searches yield more than you bargained for. You can refine your search in several ways, including using multiple word searches, and using quotation marks to find exact phrases and to turn off stemming, explained below.

Most important, however, is to be as specific as possible with your search terms, and to use terms that don't have multiple meanings. Searching on art will give you far more sites to browse through than a more specific term like cubism or Warhol; it will also give you sites about Art Buchwald. Searching on the word feet will give you sites about how to combat bunions as well as sites about scuba diving (feet below sea level).

Multiple-word searches

Another way to refine your search is to use more than a single word. You can use multiple-word searches in two ways: to find sites containing an exact phrase ("New York" or "Dylan Thomas"), or to find sites relating to more than one key word or concept (museums in Chicago).

Entering the single word Dylan will find you all the sites relating to the poet from Wales, the songwriter from Minnesota, and the heartthrob from "Beverly Hills 90210" (plus all those children of baby boomers named after the first two). If you're interested in sites relating only to the Welsh poet, you can use quotation marks to search for the exact phrase "Dylan Thomas." Without quotation marks, you'll get all the sites with the word Dylan or the word Thomas: sites about Bob Dylan and Thomas Jefferson, as well as those relating to Dylan Thomas.

On the other hand, if you're looking for information about museums in Chicago, you'll want to find sites that contain both of these key words somewhere in the text, but not necessarily next to each other. In this case, you could enter Chicago museums in the search box, or Chicago AND museums to be more exact. (The words AND, OR, and NOT, in capital letters, have specific meanings to the search engine, and are explained below.)

Here, then, is a rundown of various multiple-word search mechanisms and what they would return.

Search Text Result
"Bob Dylan"Sites containing the exact phrase Bob Dylan.

Bob DylanSites where either Bob or Dylan are present, but places those sites containing both higher in the results list than those containing just one.

Dylan NOT BobSites where Dylan is present, but places those sites also containing Bob lower in the results list.

Bob OR DylanSites where either Bob or Dylan (or both) are present somewhere. (You'll get Dylan Thomas and Bob Dole, as well as Bob Dylan.)

Bob AND DylanSites where both Bob and Dylan are present somewhere, but not necessarily next to each other. (You might get Bob Smith's fan page about Dylan Thomas.)

Using parenthesis to refine your search

Parenthesis can be used to group operators, just as they are used in mathematical equations.

Search Text Result
Chicago AND (museums OR galleries) Sites where Chicago and museums are present, as well as sites where Chicago and galleries are present.

"New York" AND (museums OR galleries)Sites where the phrase New York and the word museums are present, as well as sites where the phrase New York and the word galleries are present.

Dylan NOT (Bob AND Thomas)Sites where Dylan is present, but weights those containing Bob and those containing Thomas lower in the results list. (Useful if you're looking for some other Dylan than those two famous wordsmiths.)

Stemming: speak, speaks, speaking, spoke

The same key word can have different endings (if it's plural, for example), different tenses, and so on. NetGuide Live's search capability automatically takes this into account using a process called "stemming" to return results. Searching for roll, for example, will return sites containing rolls, rolled, rolling, and roller. Likewise, searching for rolling will return roll, rolls, rolled, and roller.

You might be surprised at some of the results you get. If you search for speak, for example, you might get back sites related to bicycles--the word spoke (as the past tense of speak) is indexed by NetGuide Live. Searching for foot will return sites containing the word feet. It's useful, but perhaps confusing, when sites about scuba diving (feet below sea level) appear.

To disable stemming, simply enclose the word you want to find in quotation marks: "foot."

Case sensitivity

All searches on NetGuide Live are case insensitive. (In other words, it doesn't matter if you type in capital letters or small letters.) All these searches are the same: dylan, Dylan, DyLan, DYLAN.

Results: listed by relevance

The words you're looking for will probably be found on several Web sites, so NetGuide Live lists these sites based on the number of times your key words appear in the text. Thus, a site where your key word appears 10 times will be listed before sites where it appears only seven times. The results are weighted so that sites with your key word in the title will appear higher on the list than sites without the key word in the title.

If your key word appears the same number of times on more than one site, then the sites will be listed from highest to lowest ranking based on NetGuide Live's overall evaluation of the site.

Results: display options

NetGuide Live offers you three different ways to view the results of your Best of the Web search. The first, called QuickList, shows you the site's name, overall rating (between one and five stars), and the first two lines of its NetGuide profile, written by one of our reviewers. The second option shows you the full text of that profile; to see this view, click on phrase "Show Full Text Profiles" in the upper right-hand corner of the results box.

The third option, called the Scorecard, shows you the complete NetGuide Live site profile, including ratings of its content, design, and personality; whether the site merits parental control (contains sex or nudity, violence, or obscene language); and whether it requires fees or registration. To see this view, click on the Scorecard icon in the right-hand margin of the results list.

When you choose to search the comprehensive Web index, the results display the name of the site and the first several lines of text from the site's home page.

Browsing Best of the Web profiles

In addition to searching, you can also find sites related to the subject you are interested in by browsing through the topics tree. Starting from the Search+Browse home page, click on the category you're interested in: Arts & Culure, for example, or Business. NetGuide Live will give you a set of subtopics, and you can continue narrowing down your search until you find the exact subject you're looking for. Each successive screen may display both sites relevant to a topic, as well as additional subtopics. The path you have followed down the topics tree is displayed at the top of the screen. If you take a wrong turn, you can go back a level either by using the Back button on your browser, or by clicking on the topic in the path that you'd like to go back to.

You can view the results of your browse through the topics tree in the same three display options you have when you search.

What's On: using Live Events

Live Events is your hour-to-hour, day-to-day guide to what's happening in cyberspace. You'll find two kinds of programming here: "Net events," which are programs occurring at a particular time of day, and "changing sites," a journal of the best new material appearing every day on the World Wide Web's most important sites.

Live Events is similar to a television programming grid, with a few Web enhancements thrown in. On the Live Events page you'll find controls that allow you to select the times and dates for which you wish to see results. You can select timed programming--Net events--for the next seven days or updates of changing sites for the past seven days.

Once you select the type of programming and the time period you're interested in, the Live Events page will appear with channel icons and short program descriptions.

Clicking on the short program description will deliver a more detailed description that also provides information on the type of event and the kind of software needed to participate. If the event is on the Web, you'll see a "GO TO EVENT" button that links directly to the chat, Webcast, or feature. If the event is on one of the online services, such as America Online, CompuServe, the Microsoft Network, or Prodigy, you'll find the keyword you need to type when connected to that service.


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