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Description

Learning about using Search Operators to level up our web searching. Part of a collection of 15 minute tech-tips. Some covering Digital Maker requirements, some just useful stuff to know.

Resources

Everyone needs a computer with internet access. YP can work in pairs. The leader needs to be able to present to the others for demonstrations.

If it's not already set, set Safe Search to On on all computers.

Instructions

5 minutes: Trigger & Intro
// Leader loads this website and shares their screen: https://www.internetlivestats.com/watch/websites/ (click on the "Watch as they Increase" button).

1. What is Web Searching?
There are billions of web sites on the Internet. This special page tracks how many websites there are - and shows how quickly new ones are being made. There's a lot of information out there! If you were to look at every website for 1 second it would take you over 30 years.

Search Engines are special websites which look at every site for you, record what they see - and let you search their index to help you find the one out of a billion you need.

There are many, many different search engines. Hands up - who can name some?

Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo.

Sites like YouTube and Facebook also have search engines just for themselves, some of them also have search operators like we're learning about today.

5 Minutes: Demonstration
// Leader opens their own browser and explains the difference between the Address Bar and the Search Box.
One thing I'd like to clarify before we start - because a lot of people don't know this - there are two ways to start using the Web. You can search for the site you want, and click on it - or if you know the site already you can type it's address in and go there directly.

This changes a little sometimes depending on your computer - but usually this bar up here ( // highlight the address bar) is for typing an address, the good news is that if you type an invalid address (for example including a space) it will usually search for you.

Today I'm going to demonstrate the search operators in my favourite search engine - it's called DuckDuckGo. Different search engines have different options so if you use something else you may need to use it to search for what operators it supports - for example "Google search operators" if you use Google.

I'll start by typing "www.duckduckgo.com" into the address bar and pressing Enter on my keyboard.

To make the results a bit more visual I'm going to use the Image Search function.

# + and -0 operators
Let's see what happens if I search for "dog" and click Images - pictures of dogs come up.
"dog cake" - now I've got pictures of cake-shaped dogs.

Now I'm going to add a minus sign in front of "dog" - see how the results are just about cakes now? The minus sign before a word means "show less of the next word".

# Double Quotes Operator
Next, Search Engines are really really smart. But sometimes you want to tell them not to be so smart. I'm going to switch back to All Results.

Usually they read the words you're typing in, think about them, rank them, find similar words and then search. But what if you want to search for one specific bit of text and nothing else?

You can wrap them in double quotes. Here's an example:

// Search for: there are plenty of badges to keep your Cubs scouting and busy

You see how there are loads of results from loads of different sites. This is actually a quote from the 2nd Edgware website. Let's wrap it in quotes to see how the results change

// Search for: "there are plenty of badges to keep your Cubs scouting and busy"

See how we only have a few results now, because these results contain exactly those words, in exactly that order. Giving us lots more power to control the results we get.

# Site: operator
The third and final operator I'm going to show you today is for telling the search engine which site we want to look for information on. This is especially useful in difficult times like during Coronavirus when we need to work hard to avoid misinformation.

// Search for: cub badges

See how we've got result from all kinds of sites? Lets say you're looking for the list of badges 2nd Edgware sent out you can add "site colon edgwarescouts.org.uk" with no spaces and then search, all those results will come from the 2nd Edgware site.

// Search for: cub badges site:edgwarescouts.org.uk

This is especially useful if you're looking for advice on Coronavirus - you can filter your results to only include gov.uk nhs.uk and who.int for example.

# OR operator
You can use the "OR" opeator to list more than one site you'd like results from:

// Search for coronavirus site:gov.uk OR site:nhs.uk OR site:who.int

5 Minutes: Activity
Alright, now that I've given you a whirlwind tour of some search results - it's your turn to give them a go! I want you to try and use some of the operators we've used and notice the difference in the results you get.
Plus
Minus
Quotes
Site:
OR

Load up your web browser and - in the address bar - type in www.duckduckgo.com and press enter

We'll go through each of my examples together so you can experiment with them yourself.

2 Minute: Conclusion
// Have everyone close their browsers and return their attention to the leader
How did everyone get on with using search operators? Does anyone want to share two searches they did and what the difference between them was?
// Have a few examples.

Thanks for listening Cubs! Using Search Operators is a way to level up your web-searching and turn you into an accurate-information-finding guru!

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