Searching Databases - Exercise

When your search does not find anything

Objective: View how searching services respond to a search with no results.

Scoring

When you are finished, click the Submit button to view the suggested results.

Background/overview

It is actually quite difficult to come up with a search query that doesn't return some results, even if the results are not of any use. Even taking several words at random seems to score a "hit" on some document. But how do search services react when there literally are no results to your query? Let us find out.

Instructions

To make sure we do not get any results, type your last name backwards as the search query. If that should happen to return any search results, type your first name backwards and your last name backwards as the query. Try this with each of the search services and note the results. Do any offer you other searching services to try? Do any suggest any further steps for you to try? Remember, that we are simulating that rare search that returns no results.

Here are the search services to use:

When you are finished, click the Submit button to view the suggested results.