Building Queries - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 82

Other useful syntax
Title, URL, and site syntax are common to a lot of search engines, whether
they're for news, Web searches, or RSS feeds. hat's because these elements
are common to all Web pages. But search engines go beyond those syntax to
ofer others that can help your searching. Keep an eye out for the following
syntax, which you can use to narrow down your searches.
Location
Some search engines, especially news search engines, ofer you a way to
narrow your searches by the location of the source. Google News does this,
for example. To use the location syntax, enter location: and the two-letter
postal code of the state you want to search. For example, location:ca will
ind news from sources in California. his syntax also works with the name
of a country (try location:ireland ). General search engines sometimes
allow you to narrow your search by country or region of the world, but less
oten by state or city.
Page size
Sometimes you can narrow down your search results to how large the page
is. Using this you can try to skip the pages that contain a minimal amount
of information, but this may mean you can miss useful pages.
Using the Advanced Search Form
Every time you use a search engine, without fail, look for the advanced
search form. Most search engines have a basic form with a query box and
maybe a couple of options. Until you visit the advanced search form (there's
usually a link next to the simple search) you'll have little idea of what that
search engine is capable of. For instance, compare Google's front page ( Fig-
ure 5.1 ) to its advanced search page ( Figure 5.2 ). he front page has a simple
query box, while the advanced page has several query boxes for providing
all kinds of search information, and even a few pull-down menus!
here are thousands and thousands of search engines and interfaces avail-
able, but they all have some basic guidelines in common. Look at the
advanced search. Look at the help iles. For each syntax you use, ask your-
self: Is this going to narrow my results? Is it going to get manageable results
while keeping them comprehensive? Experiment with them.