For instance, you are given a task to search for the latest information on advertising and the effects on children.

Using Alta Vista as our search engine (as of 17-December, 1996):

For keyword advertising
(Click the following screenshot to conduct the corresponding search)

Wordcount: 985,806
Matching documents: about 700,000

For keyword children
(Click the following screenshot to conduct the corresponding search)

Wordcount: 2,582,234
Matching documents: about 900,000

Even if we narrow down this search by using booleans (such as and[+], or, not[-], etc.), there are about 400,000 matching documents!
(Click the following screenshot to conduct the corresponding search)

Therefore, we need to narrow down our search!! For example, are we looking at:

• To solve this problem, you may need to use wildcard search, such as in AltaVista, using behav*r will return both "behavior" and "behaviour". But in HotBot, the same keyword search is behav$r.

Another way to narrow down our search is to use an exact phrase match strategy:
(Click the following screenshot to conduct the corresponding search)

Again, different search engines have different syntax for an exact match. For example, quotation marks ("") are used in AltaVista and Yahoo, but a period (.) for Lycos.

The results are much better this time, but we still have about 2,000 matching documents! Furthermore, not all of them are useful. For instance, only the document titled Journalism Paper (no. 29) actually talks about the effects of advertising and children.

Therefore, to further narrow down the search, you may need to:
use other search engines;
consider other Web sites (such as online magazines, universities, professional associations, etc.);
add more keywords; and
use some other search strategies (such as Parallel Search Sites, or Gopher sites).