Here are general steps used in searching the Internet and electronic databases.

1.   Decide what you are searching for

People often begin searching online before they are sure of what they are looking for. However, the key to successful research is knowing in advance what it is you want to find.

When conducting research for a report, term paper or dissertation, think of a key word or short phrase that summarizes what you want to write about. That will be your topic.

Suppose you have decided to write about insects. The word "insects" is too broad to use as a key word so you must narrow the topic by deciding what you want to write about insects? Since entire books already have been written about insects, and you are writing a paper or dissertation, you need to narrow your topic.

Maybe you would like to write about the eating habits of insects? Your topic would be eating habits of insects.

Having narrowed your topic, ask a question that your paper will answer. For instance, "What do insects eat?"
 

Navigate to the electronic database you plan to use or navigate to a Web search engine. You should find an area on the database or engine main page where you can click an insertion point and type in a key word. That will be the search field.

The search field is the area on the screen where you type a word or words you wish to search for. The text you type in the search field is your query.

Some search engines are case-sensitive. Some are not. If not, it makes no difference whether you enter upper-case (capital) or lower-case (small) letters in your search query. However, many search engines will try to locate exact matches for words which include capital letters. Thus, to make a generic search, type the word in all lower-case letters.

Type your query in the search field and click the starter button. That button on the screen may be labeled Search or Start or Find or Go or some other word.
 

With most search engines, better results are obtained by using more words closely related to your topic. Don't pay a lot of attention to the number of search "hits" you get. The most relevant results will probably appear near the top of the list.

For example, if you are interested in information about bugs, typing "what bugs eat" in the search field will result in more hits than you would receive from "bugs" alone, but the articles near the top of the list would be more likely to be the ones you want.

Most search engines try to prioritize findings by ranking them from most to least likely to be what you wish to find. Found items may be displayed with a numerical ranking. Or the best fits simply may be listed first.

If you enter a single word in the search field, the engine's search function looks for citations or articles that contain that word. For example, if you enter "bugs," your search results will include all of the articles that contain the word. That could be a lot of items found.

Of course, not all of the found articles will be useful to you. You may not be able to tell for sure at this point which ones contain the information you need about the eating habits of bugs.

If you enter more than one word in the search field, the engine probably will find articles that contain any of those words. So it will find even more articles than it would if you were looking for just one word.

Some engines ranks found articles according to how many of the words in your query they contain. Articles that contain all of the search words will appear first, at the top of the search results list.

Sophisticated engines recognize that the closer search words appear together in an article, the higher that article should rank. For instance, if you were to enter "eating habits of bugs" or "what do bugs eat" in the search field, the articles at the top of the results list probably would be more likely to include that exact phrase, or at least to be about that subject, than articles lower in the list.
 

It can be good news if you find readily what you are looking for. But, what if you receive a "no search results" message, meaning you didn't find any useful information. Or, what if you found 10,000 articles about bugs? You need to try a new search using different words or combinations of words in the search field.

If the search turned up too many articles, you need to add one or two additional words to get better search results.

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