It seems like for every possible happening, there’s some resource your can use for research. Yahoo! or Google or any of the other search engines in the online world provide wonderful and not so wonderful resources. Most include an advanced search option that many people tend to ignore.
On our Student Reference Portal, I actually have a whole page devoted to search for students and, instead of the simplistic search, I send those that use it to the advanced page. It serves you well to scrape through web resources and content to find what someone has already created.
In order to be effective, the search engine has to find and index the resource somehow to make it findable. There are all kinds of algorithms to determine what result is posted first.
More and more, I’m finding myself intrigued with finding a resource right now.
For that, you can’t beat a Twitter Search. But, even then, you’ll be buried with all kinds of results. In a little link off the side, you’ll find that even Twitter Search has an Advanced Search to help you find immediate results with relevancy.
This opens up a whole new world. Immediate results have not be categorized or ranked at any level. But, their value lies in the immediacy. You can even prime the results by sending out a comment to Twitter and watch the results come rolling in. It’s another new and important literacy that has huge potential when you use it and realize what the results actually mean.
This is another incredible tool to add to your searching toolkit.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.