Need help with search engine!

[Silentgoldfish]

I have to admit that this is for a University assignment. However, it's a small part of an open book one that's meant to be helping me learn to use the internet to search for things useful to an essay I have to write. We've been told to ask whoever we need to for help since this assignment doesn't contribute to the final mark. I've seem some pretty impressive web searches on here and I'm hoping for some tips to help my searches be more refined.

My problems are twofold: I have to use www.answerz.com.au and I can't find any relevant web sites at all, no matter how I refine the search.

I have to search for nurses and management, and think of extra words or phrases to refine the search. I've worked on it with my girlfriend for an hour now and while we've been able to narrow it down to 17 websites, none of them were anything but job applications or irrelevant brochures!

What kind of things could I be looking at adding to narrow my search down to articles or online publications relevant to nurses using resource management skills?

[don't ask]

I think you mean www.anzwers.com.au the search engine. Add in -brochure -application to get rid of them. Try nursing instead of nurses. Also check out www.soople.com for searches - it will make you a google expert without needing to learn any syntax.

[Silentgoldfish]

Whoops! You're right. Thanks for the other tips! Unfortunately they said in the lecture that we're not allowed to use anything but anzwerz.

[blackhobyah]

I've had a go at this and I can't replicate your results, mine seem pretty relevant.

Try doing phrase searches using " " ie "nursing management", this will find the words together, rather than simply finding the two terms in the same document.

ANZWERS used to be a much better search engine before it was taken over by Yahoo, now it only seems to operate on very basic syntax, which is unfortunate. Possibly your teacher hasn't realised that ... it used to be about the best Australian search engine, but now you can use google.com.au or do a Google search with site:.au limiter.

However, that doesn't help. What you need to work out is first of all what you're really looking for, ie, are you looking for sites about nursing management of illness, wounds etc, or are you looking for management of nurses.

If the former, nurses management wound will get you good results. For the latter try words like "nursing management" executive.

The next trick is to check some of your results to see if you can discover what jargon the professions uses for itself. I found out that the term "nurse manager" is used for senior nurses with management responsibility. So then you can start usig syntax like "nurse manager duties" or "nurse manager responsibility".

The trick is first of all to work out what you are trying to find and do broad search to find some basically relevant material. Once you've got that first site or two, check them for the topic specific language (ie professional jargon).

In all searching it's a trade-off between lots of results, many of which are not useful, and a tight search which loses some useful material.

Since internet seaching isn't all that sophisticated, my rule of thumb is a few search terms and if what you want isn't in the first page or two, try again. The single most useful syntax for internet searching is a phrase, which in almost all search engines uses quotation marks.

Good luck with your essay.

[Silentgoldfish]

Wow! That goes beyond helpful and into being printed out and added to my sheaf of lecture notes! Thanks a LOT!