1) Be Specific and Use Quotes
When you use precise terms or phrases, you will find
exactly what you want more quickly. Putting
phrases in quotations (for example, "urusov
gambit")
will return only results where those precise words
appear in that exact order. Quotes are expecially
useful when looking for games online (especially
games played in club tournaments that might never
make it into the major databases) by putting
the moves you are looking for in quotes, thus:
"1.e4
e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nf3."
2) Practice Boolean Searching
There are two basic techniques of boolean searching:
AND (or +) and OR. You can use AND to narrow
your search. For
example, the search term "urusov" returns
all sorts of results, including sites about people
with that name. Combining "urusov" AND "chess"
will return more specific results. Most search engines
today automatically insert AND into any search of
multiple terms. To broaden a search, you can use
OR. So, for example, if I want to do a broad search
on my favorite opening I might try "bishop's
opening" OR "urusov" to get the
widest coverage. You can also use other terms, including
the minus sign (-) to indicate that you wish to
exclude certain results, the wild card symbol (*)
to truncate words so as to include various spellings,
and quotation marks to return specific phrases.
Consult the user's guide to your favorite search
engine or one of the tutorials below for more details
on how best to use these techniques.
3) Collect Keywords and Get Multilingual
If you want to find everything on a particular
subject, you should expect to do several
searches using as many different keywords
as you can think of. As you conduct your
search, keep track of words that crop up
in the better results that you find and jot
them down. You should especially try to collect
alternate names and words from other languages.
For example, the Urusov Gambit is alternately
called "Ouroussoff," "Urusoff," "Urusovuv," "Ponziani
Gambit," and "Keidanski Gambit." Or
if I were searching for games beginning "1.e4
e5 2.Bc4," I would want to also try alternate
language designations for Bishop, such as L for
Laufer (German) or A for Alfil (Spanish). There
are several listings of Chess
Vocabularies in many languages online (including
this convenient table of Chess
Vocabulary in 5 Languages). A convenient
table of Alternative
Chess Piece Identifier Letters is also offered
by Chessville. For more help with translations
(including translating the international sites
you discover), try AltaVista's excellent Babelfish site.
4)
Try Several Different Search Engines or Meta-Search
Engines
Not all search engines are the same and they
will all return different results. You might
try out a meta-search engine, which will search
several engines at once, to get a sense of which
engines will be most useful for your specific
search. Some good meta-search sites are Search.com, Surfwax.com, ixquick.com, dogpile.com,
and highway61.com (the
most humorous of the bunch). See the UC
Berkeley Library's tutorial on meta-searching for
more information about meta-search engines and
a list of their rankings.
5) Look under the Hood and Customize Your Engine
Not many people know that most of the major search
engines not only explain how they find results
but offer users an opportunity to customize the
way those results are returned. At Google, for
example, you can click the link for Advanced
Search to customize or read All
about Google to get help in using their engine
most effectively for your purposes.
6) Search Smart for Images and Games
If you are looking for images on the web, a good
place to start is Google's
Image Search. But there are other ways to
search using any engine - you just have to
learn to think like a webmaster to find what
you want. When looking for images, it's best
to remember that the two most common image
file formats on the web are .jpg (for photos
generally) and .gif (for graphics). Entering
a search term along with either ".jpg" or
".gif" will return pages that match your
term and contain images. For example, try Fischer+Spassky+.jpg
at Google, and you will be able to track down
images associated with the famous Fischer-Spassky
match of 1972. To find games from that match,
you can try searching using the most common game
file formats, PGN or CB. For example, try Fischer+Spassky+PGN
at Google.
7)
Look into the Archive for Lost Sites
Remember that if it was ever on the web it is still
on the web. That might be an embarrassing truth
if you have ever posted a stupid message in a forum
or put up a childish site as a kid. But it is great
to know if you are looking for those long-lost
web articles that seem to have disappeared. It
especially helps if you have the old URL (web address)
of the site in question, since you can plug that
right into the Internet
Archive's Way Back Machine and
travel back in time. The Internet
Archive cannot bring
back Club Kasparov, unfortunately, due to copyright
restrictions I would guess. But most any other
site that was out there is still out there for
the searching. The Archive also has a Special
Collections area
and will soon be able to allow keyword searches.
When searching with Google for more recently vanished
sites, you can always try Google's "Cached"
feature that gives you the site as it appeared
when Google's web crawlers last found and listed
it.
Chess
Pages - Free Chess
Beware that these pages take a while to load at
first (likely due to very slow off-site tracking
software). The idea is to provide tutorials on
how best to use the net for chess for complete
beginners. Could be very helpful for its intended
audience.
Search
Engine Watch Tips
These tips from searchenginewatch.com
help you to think like a search engine engineer so
you can make better use of the top search tools.
Pandia
Search Central
Offers great tutorials on using the web efficiently
to find what you want.
Search
Engine Showdown
A "users' guide to web searching" from
Montana State University does a great job of describing
the various search engines out there and offering
advice on how to use them effectively..
Learn
the Net (English language version)
Now owned by About.com and therefore less usable and
more commercial, this site nonetheless offers excellent
tips and advice for beginners on searching and using
the web. Use the navigation bar on the left of the
page (under "How To") to reach the content
and avoid the more prominent links to paid advertisers
displayed on each page.
