Fluency with Information Technology, 6e (Snyder)
Chapter 5 Locating Information on the WWW: The Search for Truth
5.1 True/False Questions
1) The library has very little information which is not also available on-line.
2) As the query processor is putting together the hit list, the URLs found by the intersecting
process are sorted by their page ranking, lowest to highest, and returned to the user in that order.
3) It is not advisable to perform a site search to find information.
4) Crawlers consider descriptive text when adding the page’s URL to the index.
5) No one organizes the information posted on the Web.
6) It is usually acceptable to write queries in the form, (cherry OR grape OR lime) AND banana,
using uppercase letters for the logical operators and parentheses to make the associations clear.
7) Search engines, e.g., Google and Bing, do not allow you to enter search terms using natural
language.
8) The query processor looks up tokens or search terms in the index.
9) Search engines are able to answer user queries very quickly because crawling is a very speedy
process.
10) The main work of a crawler is to build an index.
11) Never accept information on the Web as authoritative.
12) When using Google, tilde (~) can be used as an abbreviation for NOT.
13) A “hit” on a page does not necessarily mean the search terms were found on that page.
14) Using Google’s Advanced Search, a search may be filtered further by specifying a site or
domain, e.g., .edu.
15) To make the task of intersecting multiple lists a little easier, the URL lists are alphabetized.
16) When a basic query with multiple words is performed, the pages returned by the query
contain one or more of the search words.
17) Search engines crawl only a fraction (probably less than half) of the Web.
18) For a word to describe a page, the word doesn’t actually have to be on the page.
19) The crawler considers almost anything followed by an asterisk symbol to be a token, except
short words like a, an, and the.
1) The order in which “hits” are returned to a page is determined by:
A) page rank
B) page order
C) anchor text
D) meta data
2) Which search technique will help avoid over constraining?
A) Add as many descriptive words as possible.
B) Begin with an inclusive search and add more words one at a time.
C) Include a general topic term.
D) Remove terms from the search using NOT.
3) In a Web search, a match to a query is known as a(n):
A) intersection
B) hit
C) URL list
D) none of the above
4) A Google search results include a snippet for each Web page in the list. What is a snippet?
A) text between the page’s <title> tags
B) a preview of what might be on the page
C) the site’s URL
D) none of the above
5) Which of the following is an effective technique in using the hit list?
A) Check every hit by opening the link.
B) Randomly select the links to open.
C) Skim top-level information and decide which links to explore further.
D) All of the above
6) A search engine consists partly of a:
A) link and a crawler
B) snoop and a bull’s-eye
C) crawler and a query processor
D) spider and a web
7) If quotes surround the search phrase, “human powered flight,” the search would find pages
associated with the:
A) word human
B) word powered
C) word flight
D) exact phrase human powered flight
8) A search using the logical operator OR requires:
A) one of the words to be found on the page
B) both of the words to be found on the page
C) both words to be found together on the page
D) none of the above
9) Searching for “baseball” AND (“stadiums” OR “parks”) AND NOT “national parks” would
look for:
A) baseball and stadiums and parks, not national parks
B) baseball or stadiums or parks, not national parks
C) baseball stadiums or baseball parks and would omit national parks
D) none of the above
10) One example of descriptive text is anchor text, which is:
A) a textual description of a picture
B) a phrase within <title> tags
C) highlighted link text, specified inside <a…> tags, describing the page to which it links
D) included within a <meta…> tag
11) Identify a method used to find authoritative information.
A) Obtain the information needed from Wikipedia.
B) Choose information from respected organizations.
C) Choose reports from tertiary sources.
D) Seek a single online source.
12) What type of information comes from experts?
A) information on the Web
B) authoritative information
C) information found in a library
D) information found in Google’s Advanced Search
13) A weakness of Wikipedia is that:
A) it covers a limited number of topics
B) it contains timely information
C) the content is not validated by experts
D) editing of content is highly restricted
14) In a search engine, the index is built by the:
A) indexer
B) crawler
C) query processor
D) linker
15) Which research practice will help ensure that highly reliable information is obtained?
A) Question the information.
B) Never rely on a single source.
C) Assess the site’s authoritativeness.
D) All of the above
16) The query processor processes an AND query by:
A) crawling
B) intersecting
C) removing duplicates
D) using a GUI
17) Logical operators can be combined and grouped using:
A) parentheses
B) curly brackets
C) square brackets
D) plus and minus
1) A(n) ________ is a collection of computer programs that helps us find information on the
Web.
2) A(n) ________, built by the crawler, is a list of tokens (such as words) that are associated with
the page.
3) A(n) ________ source is a person who has direct knowledge of the information.
4) When picking additional sources, be careful to choose ________ sources.
5) The fact that Web posts are ________ —that is, no one limits what people post—is generally
good.
6) The ________ of a search engine visits Web sites in order to index their contents.
7) Information found by the crawler of a search engine is organized into a(n) ________.
8) ________ and “subtracting” search terms removes extraneous hits.
9) Using ________ around words in a search makes the search engine look for an exact match.
10) To leave a term out of a search, you would need to use the ________ logical operator.
11) To locate pages containing multiple words, the query processor fetches the index lists for
each of the terms, and ________ the lists, finding URLs that are in all of the lists.
12) Words on the Web page, along with ________ text within tags, e.g., <title>, are used by the
search engine crawler.
13) The second step in an indexed search is called query ________.
14) Multiple word queries typed into a search engine are generally ________-queries.
15) A logical ________ specifies a logical relationship between the words it connects.
16) Including a(n) ________ sign in front of the number tells Google not to ignore it and to use it
as part of the query.
17) The order in which hits are returned to a query is determined—at least in part—by a number
Google calls the ________.
18) A(n) ________ search means looking only on one site.