http://www.yahoo.com/: is a general search engine. They
show subjects in bold with the number of items in parentheses (e.g., "scouting (982)" means that, if you click
on scouting, there are 982 items beneath it).
You can specify your own requirements (e.g, webelos badge requirements). This approach is best if
you know pretty much exactly what you want and are in hurry.
You can also drill-down by subjects (e.g., click on Recreation & Sports then Outdoors). If you're researching a
new subject, you may want to browse a little to get a feel for the subheadings.
If you click on http://maps.yahoo.com/, you can get a map of some place you need to go by entering
the street address and city-state. You can zoom the map in or out and also request driving directions (input your starting
address and get an itinerary with a route map). This alone is extremely handy when you need to
find a scout's house, get to a pow wow, or give your patrol directions to an outing (if you
have 6 scouts in your patrol, you can specify 6 copies to be printed).
http://www.google.com/: is another popular search engine. At one point,
Yahoo searches focused on site descriptions while Google searches were oriented toward content. This distinction has become blurred.
For example, http://directory.google.com/ is organized by subjects (like Yahoo's homepage).
Search Tips:
Double Quotes: If you search for Star Wars Episode I, you will get hits from websites with
Star Wars and Episode, in addition to the full title. If, however, you search on
"Star Wars Episode I", you will only get hits from websites that have all
four words in that order.
Plus-Sign: You can insert a space, the plus sign, and anything you want included together.
Example: Episode +I will only return hits on Episode I.
Capitalization: Searches are not case-sensitive. BSA, bsa, and bSa will all be treated the
same.
Word Stemming: Google does not support word stems. Searching for book will not return bookstore, bookings, or books.
Page Ranking: Search engines evaluate the quality of the webpages that match your criteria and
list results from highest to lowest. There may be several ties, however, so you could run the same search a few
minutes apart and get somewhat different websites on the first page (but probably not overall).
Advanced Search: You can also use the Advanced Search link to customize your search.