Web search for Middle School students: choose right keywords for an adequate web site retrieval

http://searchenginewatch.com

Educators don't have a problem to describe  keywords as significant words or phrases that identify the topic of a research. We teach students to put keywords in a search bar of a search engine, catalog or a database. However, Middle School students often complain that they have too many results and it's hard to find adequate articles. Librarians provide young adults with more specific recommendations to help them find relevant information.

Librarians suggest:

• Before conducting a research, students make a list of questions they try to answer and collect information for. Examine these questions and identify keywords.
• Relevancy of retrieved web sites depends on what words students have inserted in the search bar and in what order. A keyword headache brings different searches from the results produced by the phrase my head hearts. A keyword dentist retrieves distinct results from those that come as a result for a search for a tooth doctor .
•  Before they start research, students should think either they need facts or opinion and either they need to provide a variety of points of view. 
•  Are they collecting statistics, lesson plans, discussions?
•  Remind the students how search engines work: Web pages are tagged and described in metadata to make them searchable by search engines. If the words chosen by a researcher don't bring helpful web sites, we suggest that students use synonyms and related words .
• General keywords bring a great number of web sites while focused keywords will limit the number of websites, sometimes more than it is desired. Special terminology  retrieves highly professional articles.Using both types of keywords in the search bar is the best way to find relevant information.
•   It is recommended to use 5-7 keywords in the search session. Google brings web sites that contain the most of the keywords entered. 

Hopefully, these tips will help your Middle School students find relevant information and grow as web detectives.