1. Can you define the differences between a search engine and a directory? 2. Can you define the differences between a directory and a portal? 3. Can you name a Web directory (categorized and selective) that is larger than Yahoo? 4. For an exhaustive search, do you typically use at least two of the following - Google, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, WiseNut? 5. Can you give two reasons why, for an exhaustive search, it is imperative to use more than one search engine? 6. Can you give three (out of at least four) reasons why, when you want an exhaustive search, you usually should not use a metasearch engine (Dogpile, ixquick, Vivisimo, search.com., Metacrawler, etc.) as an alternative to search engines? 7. Do you know how to use a search engine to search within a specific large site, e.g., to use a Web search engine (instead of the site search box) to search the Department of State site for mentions of the US Ambassador to Belarus? 8. Do you know how to use a search engine to retrieve records only from a specific country? 9. Do you know how to search by title (limit your retrieval to only records with a specific term in the title) in at least three search engines? 10. Are your bookmarks ("favorites") arranged in folders? 11. Can you name two search engines or specific sites that will (roughly) translate text from one language to another? 12. Can you name two sites to go to for quickly identifying collections of links ("metasites," "Web resource guides") on a particular topic? 13. Can you name a site to go to for keeping up-to-date on what is new in search engines? 14. Can you name a site to go to for keeping up-to-date on what is new in online research tools more generally? 15. Can you identify the major search engine that allows you to use truncation (stemming)? 16. Do you know which Web search engine allows you to use the NEAR operator? 17. In that search engine, do you know how far apart the NEAR operator allows words to be? 18. Do you know which search engine provides single-search access to the largest number of news sources? 19. Can you name the major Web search engine that is case-sensitive? 20. Could you explain to someone why case-sensitivity can be an important feature? 21. Do you know the syntax for using the OR operator in Google? 22. Do you know the syntax for using the OR operator in AllTheWeb? 23. Do you know how to search for "which sites link to a site" in at least two search engines? 24. Can you name the one thing that Teoma provides on its answer pages that no other search engine does? 25. Can you name two search engines that provide country-specific interfaces (sites)? 26. When searching, by name, for a person who sometimes uses a middle name, can you give at least four phrases you might want to search for? 27. Can you name at least one site that provides a directory of links to newspapers worldwide? 28. Can you define "Invisible Web"? 29. Can you give two reasons why a Web page might be "invisible" to a search engine? 30. Can you name at least two sites that you might go to in order to get a map of Iraq (on your screen)? 31. Can you name a news site that contains international stories back at least four years? 32. Can you name at least one news site that will provide automatic alerting services for free? 33. Can you name two sites that are good for providing quick country "backgrounders"? 34. Can you name at least one Website that provides indexing of scholarly and/or trade journal literature? 35. Do you know what site to go to for searching Usenet newsgroups back twenty years? 36. Do you know a site to go to in order to find phone numbers? |