Class: Web Resources for RVers
Presenter: Joan Taylor
How to Search (the web) and Find What You’re Looking For. Search Engines.
This was an excellent class, very well presented and one of interest to all RVers. The first section was very helpful to those of us who are a bit intimidated when it comes to “searching the Internet”. Joan described the various ways one can do this, and described the three general types of search engines, Index, Directory and Metasearch.
The most popular index search engine is Google, so popular that its name has become a verb – to google means to search for information on the web. Using Google, you can search over 4 billion web pages in a fraction of a second to find what you’re looking for.
Web directories, search engines that store information in categories, include www.yahoo.com.
Metasearch search engines search search engines. These include www.metacrawler.com and www.dogpile.com.
Once you have selected the one you want to use, she recommended scrolling the whole page to see what’s there. It is easy to get sidetracked within the first few lines otherwise. Learn to ignore non-essentials, (like ads). Each directory has a help page. Use it first.
All search engines are not the same, and using one phrase on three different engines will give you three different results. If one doesn’t work, even after “refining” your phrase, try another. Know how each particular search engine works. Remember, using “keywords” to focus your search, usually produces the best results. Spelling counts. Be specific. Check the top listed hits first, but distinguish the paid advertisements from others.
Web Sites for RVers. There are hundreds of RV related web sites, and Joan provided us with a list to get us started. We were cautioned to remember that most sites are commercial, and we should ignore the ads and install anti-popup software on our computer. (This was something the University’s computer did not have, and we got several demonstrations of why such a program would be very useful!)
Joan divided her list into several categories. Links collections are designed to point a viewer to the better web pages and sites. Realize that .com after a site, means that it is commercial; you will see ads at these sites.
The remainder of this very informative class was spent examining some sites of particular interest to RVers, commercial sites such as escapees.com, and rvnetlinx.com. Non-commercial sites like rversonline.org. Boondocking sites such as boondocking.com, Travel sites like rvbyways.org (US National Scenic Byways) and Government sites – recreation.gov. How-to and Tech sites, Communication sites, and many others.