search skills Skill in conducting an online search can dramatically increase our productivity in finding resources for personal or professional purposes.  This exercise is to help learn how to conduct an online search effectively.  Congratulations if you're already proficient at this.

• My bet is you can become even better by applying the techniques you can learn with this tutorial from Pandia.  You may want to start with the with fourth bullet point: 'Advanced Internet Searching - as easy as ordering pizza.'
• You should also visit Google's Advanced Search Made Easy.

exercise 10 You're using whatever search skills you have here in exercise 11: Find four web sites for internet marketing courses such as ours.  Only the following sites qualify.

• They must be courses offered by four year degree granting academic institutions such as we have in JMU.  So you're most likely seeking a .edu top level domain.
• They must be freely accessible; i.e., they're not password protected.

You'll find an intimidating number of resources online claiming to be able to help and providing or offering resources for learning about and practicing online marketing.  Some of these really can help; many more are little to no value.

heads-up Courses such as ours may be offered under a variety of names: e-marketing, digital marketing, cyber-marketing, online marketing, & a variety of other creative course titles.

search engines & a directory There are three parts to this exercise.

1. Find a total of four sites using each of the BIG 3 search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN.  Choose what you regard as the best result provided by each of these three major engines and the Yahoo search directory.  Compare their results with results from one other search engine of your choice.  Some I suggest include Vivisimo, Clusty, and A9, but you may have another you prefer.



2. Prepare this as a Google doc called 470 ex10 search.  ID me as your collaborator using my williamsonkn@gmail.com account.  Include in the doc
• your four results; i.e., the complete URLs for the course sites you find, and
• which engine, or the Yahoo directory, you believe proved most effective for you.   This is a judgment call based on the relevance of the result and how long it takes you to find what you believe to be the best results.


3. Finally, tell me in the same email what search term (2 or more words rather than single words) in each engine and the Yahoo directory finally got the results you're seeking, and how long it took to finally come up with the 'magic' term.