Guide to Comparative Politics on the Internet

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5. SEARCH ENGINES

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Altavistaprovide a convenient way of trawling the web for a particular topic though bear in mind that some engines permit organizations to pay to appear near the top of a results page. Results vary from one engine to another so it is worth trying at least two for any topic. Also vary the phrase for which you search.

An intelligent search aims to produce a manageable set of results so explore the advanced search facilities of your preferred engines. These enable you, for example, to limit your results to those:

• of a particular type (e.g. Adobe PDF files, which are often substantial reports)
• in a particular language (e.g. English)
• from a specific domaine.g. .com, .coop, .edu, .info, .int, .mil, .museum, .org
• or from a specific country such as .dk, .no, .se
• which have been updated since a particular date (e.g. 11 September 2001)
• which have been accessed by many other users
• which have links to the page you specify
• which meet logical conditions such as:

OR – contains either keyword
e.g. ‘comparative government’ OR ‘Hague and Harrop’

AND – contains all keywords
e.g. ‘comparative government’ AND ‘Hague and Harrop’

AND NOT – exclude some keywords
e.g. ‘comparative government’ AND NOT ‘Hague and Harrop’

NEAR – contains all keywords and they are close to each other
e.g. ‘comparative government’ NEAR ‘Hague and Harrop’