The one who owns information, owns everything, this old truth is relevant to this day. In order to draw correct conclusions, it is necessary to organize the collection of information. Searching for the necessary information on the Internet has its own characteristics that must be taken into account.
Necessary
- - resource directories;
- - search engines.
Instructions
Step 1
Assess the essence of the task before you and formulate specific goals. The more accurately you define them, the easier it will be for you to organize your work. For example, you decide to find out which browsers and operating systems are the most popular with Internet users. The very formulation of the problem presupposes a fairly extensive study, since the sample must be made by country - after all, the preferences of users in different countries may differ. In the event that we are talking about one country, the task is greatly simplified.
Step 2
There are two ways to organize the collection of information in the example described above. The first is a traditional survey. It is necessary to post a voting form on popular forums so that users can select the desired answer options. The second option is based on the use of technical capabilities: information about the user's browser and operating system will be recorded automatically when he enters a page with a script installed on it that collects the necessary information. Please note that in the examples described, you yourself are conducting the necessary research, and not looking for ready-made information on this issue.
Step 3
Not all information can be collected through surveys. Much research requires painstaking web work with hundreds of visits to collect the necessary data. This type of research is called datamining, from the words data and mining. First, the necessary material is collected, based on the analysis of which specific conclusions are already drawn.
Step 4
When looking for information on the Internet, first identify its sources. As a rule, many users immediately turn to search engines, but it would be more correct to first look at resource directories. So, if you conduct research in the Russian segment of the network, it can be mail.ru or Yandex directories. For research across the Internet, check out the Yahoo !, Open Directory Project. With information from the catalogs, you can find the most famous sources of the information you need.
Step 5
If the data from the catalogs did not give the desired result, contact the search engines. The most convenient search engine is Google, as it has very convenient options for refining a search query. So, if you need a word to be present in the issued request, put a plus sign in front of it. If the word, on the other hand, needs to be excluded from the query, put a minus in front of it. For example, you need to find a laptop model of a specific manufacturer, let it be Acer. Then enter the query "Notebooks + Acer" in the search bar. Conversely, if you want to exclude models of this manufacturer from the search results, type in the search bar: "Laptops - Acer". Google has many of these features, to familiarize yourself with them read the corresponding instructions on the search service. You can get even more detailed information about searching with Google by viewing the links for the query "Google hacking".
