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How to find what the search engine's won't let you see You can pick up a much cheaper 'used' copy of this book at Amazon |
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Finding free information
Just about every person who has ever done a computer certification knows that it is not a cheap thing to do. Even the exams themselves can cost a fair bit of money (particularly if you fail the first time around), and by the time that you factor in books, equipment and the actual cost of your time that you put in to each exam, you are looking at a fair bit of money. One of the easiest ways of keeping the costs down is to self-study. In other words, find out the objectives of each exam and teach yourself the principles of each objective. To do so you will at least need the actual computer hardware and software, and the training resources to study from. Finding those training resources is what this article is all about.
The Internet is a wonderful, free, resource for finding information but many, many people do not know how to search effectively or indeed know about many of the tricks to finding good information. If you’re intending to work in the I.T. business then it’s only natural that you let your computer and the Internet work for you but most people simply slap in any old search term in their favourite search engine and then hope for the best. With a little bit of thinking ‘outside of the box’ however you can easily unearth many, many good study resources. Having said that though one thing to be wary of is breaching copyright. While it is all too easy to find the information and resources that you need on the Internet, you need to be aware that the information that you download may contravene international copyright laws and that you may be held responsible for your actions. With that said, here are some thoughts to consider... Searching the net Probably one in ten of the search phrases that people use to find this site, Certification-Crazy.net, is a well structured search term. In most cases however the terms that people use are relatively vague and quite often contain many unnecessary words. Knowing how to search effectively is the key to finding great resources.
All search engines are different and they all work on the same basic principles but you need to know that what gets presented to you for any particular search term is not necessarily the best fit to the term that you used. The Internet is big business for many webmasters and getting to the top of the search results (SERP’s) is a very competitive business and very lucrative for those who succeed. When you make a search on any particular term, the results that you get are more likely to be the result of the Webmaster's efforts at getting to the top of the search engine than the search engine itself finding the right results for your term. Keep that in mind next time you go surfing. Although there are many different types of search engines available for people to use, the vast majority of people use the top 3 or 4 engines – Google, MSN, Yahoo, and AOL (my personal favourite is Gigablast, however). All of these engines work in essentially the same way although the results that you get for any given term will differ somewhat. Knowing how to hone in on the material that you need with these engines will reward you with as much information as you need. For the sake of this article I’ll assume that you’re familiar with, and normally use, Google. The lessons are pretty much the same for most search engines though as but the majority of people use Google at the moment, I'll use them for the examples in this article.
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The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook You can pick up a much cheaper 'used' copy of this book at Amazon |
