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Search keywords
SEARCHING is a recurrent and compelling activity on the web, next only to emailing. More and more net users are opting for keyword searches to locate and retrieve the desired information.
Internet is virtually loaded with unlimited information, some five exabytes of data was produced only in 2003 and the amount is growing at the rate of 32 per cent per year. This information can be easily retrieved with the help of search keywords and phrases. Keywords mean one thing to webmasters, e-marketers and site developers and another to end users searching the web for information. In text editing and database management systems, a keyword is an indexed entry that identifies a specific record or document.
In programming, keywords are reserved commands having special meanings. And most commonly known among surfers, keywords are single words, combination of words (or phrases) that they put in search fields of search engines and websites to find something they need.
As the web is growing and search technologies are developing, reliance on keywords to locate information is also growing. WebSearchWorkshop survey shows that out of an online sample of 30000 respondents, 45 per cent search by using multiple keywords or key phrases, 28 per cent use one keyword, 18 per cent search by a pre-defined option, such as browsing through a directory category, and nine per cent search by typing in a question.
In Feb 2004, oneStat reported that of all keyword searches on the web, 32.58 per cent use two words phrases, 25.61 per cent three words phrases and only 19.02 per cent uses one word. Use of two and three keywords is on the increase.
With online population likely to cross 1000 millions by end this year, search engine marketing has gained popularity compared to other forms of advertisements. Search engines present results based on keywords. This has sparked battle dance for market leadership between Google, Yahoo! and MSN, other independent algorithmic search tools seem to have been left behind, and these leading players are making major changes in their key search strategies and operations. Which is why web authors and website optimizing professionals endeavour to select the most appropriate keywords and use them in their sites in a way that helps their product and or service stand out in web searches?
Focus in this article is on non-commercial, academic and knowledge searches by common users. Keywords are equally important for mining theoretical information from the enormous web. Users visualize keywords and phrases to get the most appropriate results to their quires. But it is never as easy as one might think to find exactly what is required. Skipping over the rudimentary steps to begin a search, it is certainly helpful for users to know about how search engine work. With the exception of Alta Vista and Infoseek, most major search engines are case insensitive. There is no need to capitalize every keyword.
Some search engines automatically detect spelling mistakes and tip up the correct ones. Best in this regards is to follow language grammar rules — English in this case — and be mindful of alternate spellings in the UK and the USA dictionaries.
Using a thesaurus (Shift + F 7 for Window users) for synonyms or simple brainstorming helps in unearthing some words searchers might not have thought of and writers might have used in the documents. Having a look at what keywords being actually used by other users in actual searches at different search sites are also a help. Some other universal strategies to fine tune searches are to use nouns and objects as keywords. Stop words, such as common verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and prepositions (and, in, or, of) are often of little or no help as they more often than not are ignored by search engines unless they are part of a phrase, put in quotes or entered with plus minus signs before them.
Using several searches at different search engines with variety of keywords and combinations of words may produce more focused results. In addition to the numerous search engines and directories (about 370 search engines on internet), there are ones that search only specific segments, such as newsgroups and ftp sites.
Others provide databases for particular age or interest community. DejaNews for searching newsgroups, directory services, email addresses; Shareware
.com> for ftp sites; Yahooligans for web-surfers under the age of 18 years; Metacrawler, SavvySearch and Dogpile for simultaneous searches at multiple search engines and country specific like
Online shopping and financial transactions have yet not picked up locally. Hence the local searches are comparatively more academic and knowledge focused as compared to those aimed at finding products and services?
“Less search savvy users mostly write lengthy questions in search boxes and some time they get lucky (as Google term this) as well,” says university teacher Abid Rehan Abbasi, “many start their search experience by putting their own names and or newly signed email addresses in the search fields.”
Zahir Khan, a Net café owner says, “I have a client who is a senior Urdu short story writer. Once in a while he comes to the café and asks me to search his name to find out if he has been mentioned by some one in literary reviews. His name usually is there. He gets the article mentioning him printed.” Abbasi says, “What you get as a result largely depends on your keywords and phrases.”
Search technologies are evolving fast and new innovations are coming up every day. InfoTame is an artificial intelligence software engine which claims to analyze billions of text documents and extract information based on its significance (rather than frequency of keywords).
The site reads, “The software can essentially ‘understand’ and find significant concepts and ideas in large volumes of information, and then summarize, categorize and correlate hidden patterns, in seconds. This is unlike traditional search engines which depend on keywords and Boolean queries.”
Another search engine, somewhat similar to Google, to retrieve results based on an image or a sketch is in last stages of development at Purdue University Research and Education for Information Systems in Engineering. Users could just draw a picture of any object, feed in the search field and the engine will search a database and retrieve all the images matching the drawing. Unless such technologies are more common, the dependence on keywords will have to stay.
Given the growing demand by users, their complaints about search results steadily loosing relevance against more commercial biases and manipulating keywords or better placements, keywords search is likely to become much more dynamic over time. But it is still not time to think of Internet as a reliable solution for information needs of an average user. There is so much that is not on the Net. Moreover, the search technologies do not fully understand what human are asking for. Books and other print material may still be a good place to visit for information need.
The writer
