INTRODUCTION

The United States Geological Service (USGS) has headquarter web sites and several other web sites scattered around the US. In most cases, these are aggregated under the USGS's own government domain: http://usgs.gov.

The USGS web sites have a profound amount of information on them. A search on Google Advanced for the acronym USGS and limited to the domain usgs.gov brings up about 495,000 web pages and other documents. Interestingly, a search on the acronym USGS using the search box on the USGS web site ownly turns up about 238,000 web pages, etc.

SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION ON THE USGS

Thre are a variety of excellent tools for searching for information on the USGS Web. These include general search engines such as Google, government-specific search tools such as FirstGov, and the USGS's own search tools. A few are discussed below.

Important Note: Numerous government documents are in Word (.doc), Acrobat (.pdf), and other special formats. When you know the form of the document(s) that you are seeking, it is worthwhile to limit your search to that format. Google Advanced Search and FirstGov.gov's Advanced Search offer this capability.

USING A GENERAL SEARCH ENGINE: GOOGLE ADVANCED

• Address: http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
• As noted above, Google indexes more web pages and documents on USGS than the USGS does itself.
• We do not know, though, how often Google's webcrawler software accesses, downloads, and indexes the USGS web sites.I would suspect that the USGS search engine is more up-to-date only because it is more likely to search and index its own web site more frequently. Google is also more likely to have dead pages that the USGS has eliminated, renamed, or installed in a different place
• How to used the Google Advanced Search to search the USGS web site:

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USING A GOVERNMENT SEARCH TOOL: FIRSTGOV.GOV

• The federal government's own search engine for government web sites. - It does not give an exact count of web pages for the above USGS search, only noting that there is at least 1,000 records.
• How to use the FirstGov.gov web site to search the USGS:

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USING THE USGS'S OWN SEARCH ENGINE

• http://search.usgs.gov/ - Then click on "Advanced Search."
• The USGS provides four additional ways of locating information on the USGS web site.
  • The "Topics" index at the bottom of the Advanced Search page is essentially a subject directory of the USGS web site.
  • A Site Map in the upper-right-hand corner of the Home Page and the Advanced Search Page.
  • In the right-hand column of the Home Page there is a link to an extensive and cross-referenced Alphabetical Index of the web site.
  • An interactive Regional Information map on the Home Page enables you to access Regional Studies and State information.
• How to use the USGS.gov web site's Advanced Search:

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