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Using the Yahoo! Search Option

Now that we know how to search Yahoo using the browse option, it is time to explore its keyword search capabilities. This will also prepare us for searching HotBot. Searching Web indexes by keyword appears to be quite straightforward; however, there are many finer points that we must be aware of before we consider ourselves proficient searchers.

The first thing we must know is what the database does when we ask it to perform a keyword search. Some databases search for the words only in the title field of the database record, others search in the title as well as the abstract field. If the database has subject headings assigned by an indexer the database might search the subject field of the record. Some databases, especially Web indexes, search for the keywords throughout the entire text of the document. And while searching the full-text of the document sounds like a good idea, it does present certain difficulties--chief among them is that the words we request in the search may appear on different pages of the document and have nothing to do with our topic.

Yahoo performs keyword searching by looking for the words in the title of the Web page, the one or two sentence abstract written by the Web page designer, and in the subject category assigned by the indexer. Let's take a look at the Yahoo search screen for an example:

Notice that we have entered the words "English" and "Literature" in the search box. We will pretend that we are looking for Web sites that discuss English literature. Pressing the search button provides us with the following results:

Yahoo found 9 subject categories and 910 individual Web sites that contained the words "English" and "Literature." If we look at the next graphic we will notice that the words "English" and "Literature" do not always appear next to each other.

One of the Web sites deals with both English and American Literature, and another Web site is for an English 592 class. While the first Web site may be of interest to us, the others seem off the mark. We need to refine our search so that our results are more appropriate to our topic.

There are a number of ways to refine our search. One effective way to narrow a search is to look for the words as a phrase (this means that the words must appear next to each other in the order in which they are typed). To perform phrase searching on most Web indexes we enclose the words in quotation marks.

"English Literature"

Pressing the Search button produces the following results:

Now there is only 1 category and 27 Web sites that match our search. All of the matching sites have the words "English" and "Literature" next to each other.

Now we'll try something a little more difficult. Let's pretend that we are looking for Web sites discussing John McCain's stance on campaign finance reform. We will use both phrase and boolean searching techniques to perform this search. We have already discussed phrase searching. Boolean searching techniques help us search by providing us with methods for narrowing and broadening our search results. To do a boolean search we use boolean operators. There are three main boolean operators:

For our search we will look for Web pages with the word McCain and the phrase Campaign Finance Reform. In Yahoo we must use symbols which stand for the boolean operator.

To perform our search we type, +"campaign finance reform" +McCain

Pressing the search button provides us with the following results:

The results page provides us with quite a bit of information. Towards the top we see that Yahoo located 0 categories and 1 Web site. Looking at the bottom of the page we see the 1 result, "It's Your Country" This looks like a good Web site. However, Yahoo only located one Web site. This is a bit of a disappointment as we would want to see more. Before we give up in frustration thinking that Yahoo doesn't have much on our topic, we must take a closer look at the Yahoo results page. Look at the page and locate the table that begins with the word "Categories" Notice that the next cell in the table is highlighted in light blue and contains the words "Web Sites." The page we are looking at are the Yahoo Web Site matches. However, there are other options, including "Web Pages," "Related News," and "Net Events." Clicking on each of these links will provide us with additional resources.

Clicking on the "Web Pages" link will perform another search. Yahoo has partnered with the large search engine Google. Pressing the "Web Pages" link will send our Yahoo search to Google and we will get a new set of results.

Google has located 9,510 Web pages that match our search. This provides us with quite a few more resources. If we now click on the "Related News" link we see:

Here we find news articles related to our topic that Yahoo has pulled together. These might be quite helpful to us in writing a paper.

The final option is "Net Events." This link will provide us with access to events that are occurring on the Internet at this time. Unfortunately there are no events occurring on the Internet related to our topic.

There is one last search option we need to examine. Our previous search was quite narrow and only gave us one Yahoo Web site match. As a result, Yahoo did not provide us with one of its helpful search result features. We will now broaden our search to include only the phrase "Campaign Finance Reform."

We get the following results:

We want to call your attention to the "Inside Yahoo! Matches" category. Yahoo provides you with links to the latest stories on campaign finance reform as well as a link to its page of in-depth news coverage on the topic. When we click on the latest stories link we see the following:

And when we click on the in-depth news coverage link we see:

The in-depth coverage provides us with all kinds of useful information related to the subject of campaign finance reform. This is a very useful aspect of Yahoo and we recommend that you always look for this option in your search results.

If you need more help with searching Yahoo you can always consult the Yahoo help pages. To access the Yahoo help pages simply click on the help button located in the top right hand corner of the Yahoo screen.

You will see the following:

Yahoo provides you with help for its various components. To get help on searching click on the Searching Yahoo! link in the "General Introduction" category. You will see the following:

Yahoo provides you with many search help options. Good luck.

Now that we have finished the searching Yahoo lesson try searching Yahoo yourself. Go to the Yahoo Search Exercise now.

Now it is time to search Yahoo completely on your own. Print the Yahoo Assignment. Then go to Yahoo and answer the questions. To assist you in evaluating the web sites you find print off the Evaluation of Web AND Print Resources sheet.