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Organising Your Keyword Search
By Paul Myers, BBC Training & Development
Keyword search engines search
their database for any web pages that contain words that you specify.
Therefore effective keyword searching involves guessing which words will be on
the sort of page you are looking for.
Some words will be on every
page - let's call them anchors. Other words will be on some, but not all pages.
Let's call these rudders.
Including an anchor in your
search concentrates the search engine on your main subject. Including a rudder
in this search will steer the search engine to the specific direction of your
enquiry.
You can explore many
different directions by swapping and adding rudders to an anchor in your search.
A search for Tony Blair's hobbies will have "Tony Blair" as an anchor
and this might be mixed and matched with rudders like 'hobby', 'pastimes',
'hobbies', 'spare time', 'plays', 'biography', 'golf' etc.
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Without the anchor "tony
blair" you would only get general pages that mention hobbies. Without the
rudders you would get millions of pages mentioning Blair, but not specifically
his hobbies.
Breaking down a complicated
research task into definite anchors and possible rudders makes keyword searching
more efficient.
Brainstorming these angles
with colleagues beforehand can make your research more creative and unearth new
leads. For example, a colleague may know that Tony Blair played guitar in a band
called "Ugly Rumours". This gives you new rudders:
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