Hi list Member!
Just FYI.
Using Search Engines to Find Information on the Web
Search Engines
Search engines on the World Wide Web are remotely accessible programs that
let you do keyword searches for information on the Internet. There are
several
types of search engines and searches may cover titles of documents, URL's,
headers, or full text. Keep in mind that the results you get from one
search
engine may not match the results you get from another search engine. In
fact, they are often different due to the way each search engine behaves.
Therefore,
it may actually be beneficial to use more than one search engine on a
regular basis.
In this section, we will briefly look at Google and Yahoo. Web pages are
often dynamic and can change at any time. As a result, you may find that
if
either
site changes, your experience with JAWS may be different than what is
described.
Google.com
When you first go to the
Google Web site
there is a blinking cursor in an edit box where you can type the word or
phrase that you are interested in. The first thing you need to do is press
the
ENTER key to go into Forms Mode with JAWS. Once you are in Forms Mode, you
can then type in keywords that will define your search. After you have
typed
in some text, press ENTER to activate the Search button.
Google only returns Web pages that contain all of the words in your query.
If you find that you get too many "hits" or Web pages that match your
search,
you can enter more words in your search query to narrow the choices.
Using good keywords gives you better results. Be as specific as you can.
For
example, a search for the keyword "musicians" will yield far more results
than
a search for the keywords "Elvis Presley." You do not need to include
"and"
between terms, but the order in which you type your keywords will affect
the
search results. You can also search for a specific phrase by including
words
in quotation marks. Google searches are not case sensitive.
You can also use the following items within your keywords for Google
searches:
. + (plus) sign. Causes Google to include common words or characters that
Google normally might ignore, such as "where" and "how." If a common word
is
important
in getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign
in
front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)
. - (minus) sign. Causes Google to exclude a word from your search. For
example, "bass" can refer to fishing or music. You can exclude
music-related
hits
by searching for "bass -music." (Be sure to include a space before the
minus
sign.)
. ~ (tilde) sign. Causes Google to include synonyms of a particular
keyword
in the search.
. OR searches are also supported. Use an uppercase OR between terms.
The I'm Feeling LuckyT button takes you directly to the first Web page
Google returned for your query. You will not see the other search results
at
all.
For example, to find the home page for Stanford University, simply enter
"Stanford" into the search box and choose the I'm Feeling LuckyT button.
Google
takes you directly to www.stanford.edu, the official home page of Stanford
University.
To find listings for a US residence, type any of the following
combinations
into the Google search box:
. first name (or first initial), last name, city (state is optional)
. first name (or first initial), last name, state
. first name (or first initial), last name, area code
. first name (or first initial), last name, zip code
. phone number, including area code
. last name, city, state
. last name, zip code
Try a search for Freedom Scientific.
Use this link to go to the Google Web site.
On the results page, there are a couple of things you can do to get more
information about the results of the search:
. The statistics of your search are typically placed between the search
edit
box and the search results. You can press DOWN ARROW a few times to find
this
line or you can use the JAWS find command CTRL+F to look for the words
"Personalized Results" and then read that line. For example, when testing
this the
search found "Personalized Results 1 - 10 of about 37,700,000 for Freedom
Scientific. (0.11 seconds)." This can be useful if you need to narrow the
search.
. The items found as a result of your search are placed on the page as
both
links and headings. You can press the navigation quick key H to move
quickly
among the headings that match your search. Since they are also links, you
can press ENTER to activate them and move to those Web pages of interest.
. Below each heading (and link) that match your search is a short synopsis
of what that page is about. After pressing H to move to a heading (link)
just
press DOWN ARROW to read the text below it for more information.
. Remember, you can also press SHIFT+H to move backwards.
You can also read through the search results page using normal reading
keys
or use INSERT+F7 to open the list of links and see what related links were
found.
Use the Move to Link button in the links list (ALT+M) to move to a
particular link and then down arrow through the associated text to find
out
if this
might be what you are looking for.
Each hit is also followed by a "Cached" link. Google's cache is a snapshot
of the page taken as it crawls the Web. Cached pages may have changed
since
they
were first captured.
There is also a link below each hit called "Similar Pages" that may yield
more results. In addition to the information displayed on the initial
results
page, there are often links to more pages of information that meet your
search criteria. These pages are reached by activating the link for the
number
of the page. Usually you will find links for additional pages 2 through 10
near the bottom of each page.
Yahoo.com
Yahoo is another search engine that many people use. The main Yahoo page
also has more information on it, such as sports and news headlines,
entertainment
links, and links to many other items. This tends to cause the page to
appear
more cluttered than the Google site, but may prove itself useful to you as
well. As with Google, when you first go to the
Yahoo Web site
there is a blinking cursor in an edit box. Turn on Forms Mode in JAWS by
pressing ENTER and type in your keywords. Then press ENTER to begin the
search.
Yahoo behaves very much the same way as Google, and displays a list of ten
hits per page of matching items. These are links to further resources, and
each
link here also has a text description taken from that source that matches
your query.
After a Yahoo results page loads, press the letter H to move to the
heading
"Search Results" and press DOWN ARROW to the next line to find the
results.
You should hear something like the following: "Results 1 - 10 of about
2,860,000 for Freedom Scientific. Search took 0.11 seconds."
The results do not show up currently as headings, but are links with text
between them that describe each link. Press INSERT+F7 to use the list of
links
to explore the links or you can also press TAB to move from one link to
another. Each main link contains a short text synopsis below it and a few
other
links such as:
. Cached
. More from this site
list end
Yahoo also has links to other results pages, just as Google does. These
links show as numbers 2 through 10 and are located near the bottom of the
page.
Thanks for your patience in reading out this article.
With Regards
v.thanislas
