Search Skills: Homing in on Research

August 13th, 2009 | Written by: lauren

Search Skills… Well. I think I’ve out-Googled myself. Over the last 24 hours, I have spent a ridiculous amount of time RESEARCHING. Luckily, I enjoy performing such a task.

The Internet makes acquiring knowledge lightning quick. I adore it. When one of my friends asks a question while we’re hanging around, another is sure to say “Lauren’s already on it,” (especially when it comes to movie trivia.) It’s just likely that I’ve already retrieved the computer from a convenient location near my spot on the couch. The Internet is nerd heaven. It’s instant gratification for geeks.

And search engines are teaching the general public a more scholarly mindset; whether their search intentions are scholarly or not. The act of ‘searching’ requires effort on our part. Search engine algorithms do aim to make it easier, but well, they’re only a machine. They can’t control all the content on the web, (mostly created by sloppy humans,) they can only attempt to present it in an organized fashion. So faced with an empty query box, how do you find the information you need?

Get Granular

Let’s get this straight- your goals for a query rarely repeat themselves. So one site doesn’t fit all. Sometimes the hardest thing about finding that tidbit you just need to know is that you’re simply looking in the wrong place. This can be infinitely frustrating, because you won’t find what you’re looking for! Sometimes too, the best known resources won’t have what you need.

Sometimes, it’s better to start small and work your way back. Take a research magnifying glass- What are you looking for? As an example, let’s pretend we’re searching for an auto sales job in Virginia. Most people will head straight to Monster.com, Craigslist or CareerBuilder. They will be disappointed at the selection. They will be discouraged. They will think there are no jobs available- could that possibly be true?

Of course not! Yes, there are so many jobs in a given region. However, only a percentage of them will be posted online. Only a percentage of employers posting online will decide that one of these sites is best for recruiting a potential employee. So get granular and brush up those search skills!

Just as you wouldn’t go to a psychic to help with your stock portfolio, you need to select the resources that work. The simply query “auto sales jobs” is a good place to start. Right away, I have 3 industry specific resources for a job search. No luck? Try it with a twist and see what happens! “Car dealership jobs” returns still more results, and “jobs selling cars” still more. The key, always, is not to get discouraged. There are millions of results for each keyword, and there will be lots of information at each site in the first few SERPs.

Taking a broad approach can make you feel as though the material you seek just isn’t there. Digging deeper and changing your keywords gives you options you may not have realized before. There are thousands upon thousands of specific resources that may be more helpful than the “go-to-guys.” We just need a little search skills!

Sometimes though, getting too nitty-gritty can be discouraging as well.

Take a Broader View

Sometimes you can start a search that’s too specific. I had this problem yesterday while searching for potential link partners for a client. Just as an example, let’s pretend we are searching for blogs written by auto salesmen. Thinking that we have a pretty clear niche and that a targeted search will produce the best results, we’ll head to Google blog search and types in “auto sales.” Some promising results may appear on the surface, but when you really get into it, all you find is a post about recession auto sales here, a blog hosted by a corporate dealership there. Our next step is to head over to Technorati. The blog tracking site should have answers, right? Well, here we’ll run into a problem again- only finding blogs written about cars, blogs written by car enthusiasts, etc. No luck.

So getting granular with blog search really didn’t help us at all, right? Well in this case we need to step back from the magnifying glass and go back to Google (or Yahoo or Bing.) As a blogger myself, I thought, “what keywords do I use for our blog?” This gave me my clue as to what to do next. Our next query should be “auto sales blog” in a regular search engine. Where Google’s blog search only searches posts for your terms, and Technorati searches term for term rather than keyword phrase, Google’s basic algorithms are best to seek out the topic of a site.

Right away, we have results! But upon closer examination, only one or two of the results fits our fancy. So what’s next? There have to be blogs written by car salesmen, right? Maybe “car salesman blog” will work… Voila! You’ll find some promising results. (As a sidenote, the best way to find related blogs is through these bloggers. SEO still isn’t a high priority for many bloggers, and just because they aren’t on a search engine’s radar doesn’t mean they aren’t there.)

Performing search engine research can be discouraging- learning how to search intelligently is a skill that can enhance any Internet user’s experience, save time and get you thinking in different ways. Some tips to take away in case you get stuck:

• Fresh perspective. Remember, there are many ways to say what you need, and just as many keywords. Think in the box, around the box, across from the box. Even stand on the box. You’ll find different results almost every time.
• Search elsewhere. The same site that helped you find the lowest price on an iPod won’t get you statistics on who watches Sesame Street.
• Start from scratch. Instead of searching for a specific piece of information, search for the sort of places you might find the info. You’ll give yourself a whole new direction, and maybe find something you didn’t know you were looking for.
• Ask questions. A trick I didn’t learn until recently is typing a question into Google. It doesn’t always yield desirable results. But you know how I found that trick out? I asked someone. (Yahoo! Answers is a great place to go to find what others have to say- you won’t always find the answer but I bet you’ll find the question!)
• Don’t despair. In this day and age, we’re used to instant gratification, and the Internet has revolutionized research. Perseverance is your friend.

re-search - verb – to search or search for again.

research – noun - diligent and systematic inquiry or investigation into a subject in order to discover or revise facts, theories, applications, etc.

(If you’re adept at the latter, you’ll never have to face the former.)

What resources have you found helpful when search engine research didn’t give you the results you wanted? What techniques make you a smart searcher?

Tags: research, Search Engines, searching, skills

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Blog, Search Engines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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