Lab: Searching the Web

CS 102

Feb. 4, 1998

Working in groups of three which I'll assign, research the topic Personal Privacy in the Electronic Age. Use three different search engines. (Recall that we found a list of numerous search engines at Yahoo last week. You may return to that list to select your search engines.) A different person is to take the lead in conducting the search at each search engine site. The two remaining team members should assist. Use the search operators available at each engine to narrow your search so that fewer than 100 documents are returned. You will need to study the help pages available at each search engine in order to learn its specific capabilities. Post summaries of the results of your searches to the class bulletin board (one summary for each search engine visited, so three summaries per group). In each summary, discuss the following:

1. Which search engine was used.

2. How you converted the topic statement to a keyword or keywords.

3. Your initial and final search queries and the counts of how many documents were returned for each query. Because the final search query will likely be somewhat complex, provide an explanation of it in simple English.

4. A quick assessment of the relevance of the first three documents returned by the final search query.

1. Name: The names of the members of the group. The leader's name should be first.

2. E-Mail: The leader's e-mail address.

3. Subject: The phrase ``Search engine lab:'' followed by the name of the search engine.

4. Message: Your summary.