Searching websites
Searching websites
What's coming up?
Search engines are not the only way to find information on the internet. Many websites have their own search facility to help you find information within their sites.
In this activity, you'll find out how to search for information on websites.
Start activitySo, what's the difference?
A search engine...
- searches for information on the whole internet
- groups the results into websites, images, videos, etc
- will recognise a word if you spell it incorrectly.
A website search...
- only gives results from that specific website
- groups all results together into a single list
- doesn't usually suggest alternatives for misspelt words.
Searching for information on a website
Let's consider the ABC website.
It has lots of information about things like news, sport, TV, radio and weather. But if you can't see what you're looking for on the homepage, what do you do?
What if you're just looking for information about a TV program, for example Australian Story?
You could use the search facility on the www.abc.net.au website. Let's find out how.
Select the search icon
First, we type www.abc.net.au into our browser address bar and press the Enter key. Once the ABC's web page opens, click on the little icon that looks like a magnifying glass at the top of the page, near the right-hand side. This is the Search icon, and it will take you to the ABC's search page.
Click inside the search box
Next, click inside the Search for a topic or program search box at top of the page, and type in Australian Story. Then press the Enter key.
See the page update
The page starts trying to predict what you are searching for as soon as you start to type Australian Story. Once you have completed typing the exact phrase, you will see a full list of Australian Story programs that you can view on the ABC's iview page.
Selecting from the results
By clicking on one of these items, you will be taken to the ABC's iview page, and you can scroll down to find the exact episode you want to watch.
Watching the episode
Once you've found the episode you want to watch from the iview listings page, click on the episode's Play button, and the episode will open and start playing in a new page.
Once you have finished watching the episode, you will be returned to the iview listings page once more so you can choose something else to watch.
Congratulations!
Well done, you've reached the end of the Searching websites activity.
In this activity we've seen how to use the search feature on a specific website.
In the next activity, Saving images and files, you'll find out how you can save things that you find online.