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00:00Egomaniac.
00:20Dear Tim and Moby,
00:22Search engines are pretty good at helping me find things.
00:26But sometimes they don't seem to understand what I'm looking for at all.
00:29Why is that?
00:31Confused Dennis.
00:33Search engines are often our first stop when we go online.
00:37Lots of people set them as the home page of their browsers.
00:40Not surprising, since there are billions of pages on the internet.
00:43Without a way to organize them, navigating the web would be impossible.
00:48Search engines filter all this material, making it easier to find what we're looking for.
00:54There are lots of different search sites, but they all work pretty much the same way.
00:59First, you type in what you're looking for, your query.
01:02With most of them, you can type just like you're speaking to a person.
01:06Search engines are programmed to recognize our natural language.
01:10They scan the web to find pages that best match your search terms.
01:16Well, like when you go ego-surfing to see what people think of you.
01:19The search engine actually breaks your query down into keywords,
01:23then tries to determine which of them are the most important.
01:27And, sorry to say, you're not the only Moby out there.
01:30So, with this query, the search engine has to guess which one you're looking for.
01:35Adding more terms can clear up that confusion.
01:37They provide more keywords to help figure out which Moby you mean.
01:41Each one is like another clue or puzzle piece to a search engine.
01:46The more keywords you plug in, the more likely you are to get the results you're looking for.
01:50They don't have to be in a sentence, or in any particular order,
01:53or in a lot of cases, even spelled correctly.
01:57Well, they're not really thinking.
02:00Search engines base a lot of their decisions on what other users are doing.
02:05Results are weighted, or ordered, according to these patterns.
02:08Like how popular a search term is, or if something's in the news.
02:12The assumption is that if lots of people are interested in a topic, you must be too.
02:19You can see weighting at work when you begin a query.
02:22You'll start to type in your terms, and then the search engine tries to complete the query for you.
02:27It might even ignore terms that you think would make good keywords.
02:32Well, there are ways to counteract weighting and get the results you want.
02:36Depending on the search engine, a plus sign or quotation marks can signal that a term is important.
02:42They'll only return pages where those words definitely appear.
02:46Quotes are also great for searching an exact phrase.
02:49A minus sign before a word indicates that it isn't relevant to your search.
02:54Any page that includes it won't show up in your results.
02:58A quick way to tell if your results are improving is to look at the number of hits, or results.
03:03A lower number usually means you've done a good job of narrowing things down.
03:07And the top results will be more likely to match what you're looking for.
03:12Well, remember, the Internet isn't just for kids trying to research their homework.
03:17People use the web for all sorts of stuff.
03:20Keeping up with sports, finding movie times, and shopping for just about everything.
03:24The Internet is a big business for search engines.
03:27They make money by showing advertisements alongside search results.
03:31And businesses spend a fortune to make sure their web pages appear higher in search results.
03:37As with any tool, you just have to be smart about how you use search engines.
03:41Use what you learn to keep refining your query.
03:45Like, if you're interested in researching Abraham Lincoln's childhood,
03:48your initial results will show you that he spent most of it in Kentucky.
03:52Adding that to your query will narrow down your results.
03:55Most engines also let you search by specific content types.
03:59You can confine results to books, current events, videos, images.
04:04Some let you read through entire chapters, or search for articles in a specific date range.
04:09All of which makes research way easier.
04:13Well, search engines are a great place to start your research.
04:17They're really there to show you other sites to investigate.
04:20For schoolwork, you can search directly on sites for newspapers and other periodicals.
04:25Colleges and university websites have archives of letters, photos, and other primary sources.
04:30Those are historical documents made by the people who lived it.
04:34Websites run by organizations dedicated to your topic are another good bet.
04:38They're likely to have source materials you can't find anywhere else.
04:42And remember, there's no substitute for a real, live human being.
04:47Teachers and librarians can help you with your searches.
04:50They might suggest keywords you never thought of.
04:53Or direct you to other resources, online and off.
04:57Anyway, I hope I've been some kind of help to you on your little quest.
05:05Ugh, why do I bother?
05:09I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:11I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:13I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:15I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:17I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:19I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:21I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:23I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:25I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:27I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:29I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:31I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:33I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.
05:35I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing.