This training resource is designed to provide you with information on advanced internet searching - how to search the internet quicker and more effectively. It will cover the use of search engines, different types of search engine and so on.
For an updated version of the lists, please visit http://www.pageflakes.com/philipbradley/24862032
Depends on the type of search engine. Some will emply robot or spider
programs that wander around the web, and when they find a new page or site will
copy the data back to their home base and will include the information when
they next update their index. Other search engines, such as the Directory based
services rely in web page authors visiting the engines and registering
directly.
Those search engines that employ a ranking service will then also
take into account a variety of things about the web page that they have
returned to the user at the completition of a search. Some of the things that
will be considered are:
This cheat sheet is taken in part from the one provided by Google at http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html
| Search Example | What it means | |
| Vacation Russia | Find all pages containing Vacation and Russia, though not necessarily next to each other | |
| Russia OR England | Find all pages containing Russia or England | |
| "holidays in Europe" | Find all pages that contain that exact search string | |
| virus -computer | Find pages that contain virus, but exclude any that mention computer | |
| ~guide | Finds the word guide and any similar words as a synonym search | |
| blind * mouse | both words with anothe word in between | |
| blind ** mouse | with other words in between | |
| filetype: | doc/pdf/xls/ppt/swf | |
| Advanced Search | What it means | Example |
| define: | Defines a word, with associated website link | define:library |
| site: | Limits the search to one particular site | site:www.philb.com |
| site:.uk | Limits the search to sites that end in www.something.uk | |
| site:.ac.uk | Limits the search to sites that end in www.something.ac.uk | |
| site:.gov.uk | Limits the search to sites that end in www.something.gov.uk | |
| [#]..[#] | Search within a range of numbers dvd player $100..$250 | DVD player $100..150 |
| date: | Search only a range of months | Olympics date: 3 |
| safesearch: | Exclude adult-content | safesearch: sex education |
| allintitle: Chrome | All words in the title element | |
| allinurl: Chrome | All words in the URL | |
| allinanchor: Chrome | All words in linking text | |
| link: | Linked pages | link:www.philb.com |
| related: | Related pages | related:www.philb.com |
| 23 in roman numerals | Changes numbers to Roman Numerals | |
| 1 inch in mm | Changes inches to millimetres | |
| movie: | Information on movies | movie:lost boys |
| term a term b term b etc | More precise searching (Google Sinker) | dog cat cat cat cat cat |
| whois philb.com | Information on a specific website | |
| ba123 | Flight information | |
| Inquotes | Check to see what people are saying about a subject | |
| Things to do | Video of 52 different things to do at Google | |
| Insights into Search | See what people are searching for | |
| Google custom search engines | Not a Google listing, but useful to look at | |
| Official way of searching | site:google.com inurl:cse inurl:coop | |
| Google Laboratory | See what they're up to | |
Microsoft Live
Different ranking, different database
Video
mouseover for a preview of the image without having to load the lot
The
contains: operator allows you to find pages that link to specific file types.
Save images into a scratch pad.
Get results as RSS feeds; append
&format=rss to the URL
The prefer: option
Ask
Ask has a better search suggestion option
Blended
results
Narrow/broaden options
Quick reference answers
Links to
Wikipedia, News, Images etc
All on one page
"My stuff"
Exalead
Excellent advanced functionality
Superior image
search
Good preview option
View just the recent stuff
Good for
video
Create your own shortcuts on home page
These are much simpler to use, since they are based on a hiarchical approach, going from broad subject headings to narrower ones. Simply drill down through the headings until you get to the section which interests you and view the websites listed. Alternatively, you can make use of the search facility that they provide. With Yahoo! for example this search facility will find not only subject headings but also individual sites. The major disadvantages of this type of engine are that they only index a very small percentage of the published websites, and they may not be arranged in a sensible way with regards the hierarchy.
Some examples:
Yahoo!
Directory
http://www.dmoz.org/
With a multi/meta search engine you will get results from various search
engines, so it's a more comprehensive set of results. They may also suggest or
use other search engines that you're not aware of. Disadvantage is that you may
not be able to use advanced search syntax.
Ixquick has a nice range of UK based search
engines
Trovando provides access to a
large number of different engines for a consecutive search
Intelways is similar to Trovando
Mamma is very well know, been going for
years
Kedrix is a GYMA engine
Symbaloo is a start page type search
engine, which allows you to create your own options
Browsys allows you to create custom folders
linking to specific sites.
If you need to find a search engine that will concentrate on a particular country or region I've got a page on my site that covers exactly that!
Eurekster
MyStuff
My Yahoo!
Clusty
Collarity
Searchy
Decipho
Delicious great for social
bookmarking and also add /tag/searchterm at the end for specific
searching
digg has been around for a
while now and is coming in for criticism, but worth trying for popular/current
material. Also try digg swarm to see
where people are going now.
reddit is also
good for the serendipity material
Feedster for current information, weblogs
and so on.
Slideshare for powerpoint
presentations
Spurl is like Furl
Trexy allows you to save 'trails' with their
toolbar
Exalead allows users to
limit/re-rank by date
Grokker allows
you to search and re-rank according to date
Not all search engines display information in a textual manner - some of them allow you to view the data in rather different ways. These very often appeal to teenagers and students.
Kartoo provides a visual indication
of importance of results and links between them. This was just about the first
of this type of search engine and in many ways is the best. It allows you to
easily limit a search, get an overview of a specific site and see the
relationship between different sites.
Mooter provides an initial visual
representation.
WebBrain displays a
visual representation above, and links below
Quintura is a new engine offering a tag
cloud based on results
Ujiko provides an
interesting approach.
SearchCrystal is both a multi
engine and visual in one go
Viewzi
offers a wide variety of options
Who is like it? This is very good and
accurate
Similicious is another
comparison engine
Web Insuggest has
various options - web or image
Taste
Kid - less for websites, more for personal interests
What is a Virtual Library (VL)?
As the Internet has grown, so has the information to be found upon it. However, this leads to two major problems - how to find it, and how to assess the information when you finally get there. A VL is the answer to both of these questions. They are designed to offer quick and easy ways of finding quality information that can assist researchers in their work.
A VL is an online catalogue or directory of top quality information resources which can be found on the Internet. Quite often, a VL will allow users to read descriptions of those resources which they can assess, and then to go directly to those resources in order to use them. A VL will point to these resources and the user can go to them, confident in the knowledge that they have been selected and assessed by an information professional, making it the electronic networked equivalent of an academic research library.
Where can I find a list of VL's?
There are literally hundreds of VL's scattered around the globe, covering general subject areas, very specific subject areas, with high coverage, low coverage and so on. There is no standardisation or strict definition as to what a VL is or is not. However, there are some good starting points.
A weblog is a website or page that is the product of (generally) an
individual or of non-commercial origin that uses a date limited or diary
format, and which is updated either daily or at least regularly with new
information about a subject, range of subjects, or personal details.
This
information may have been written by the author of the log, obtained from other
sources on the web, contributed by others, or a combination of those. They are
consequently usually topical and timely, and can be viewed as a developing
commentary on a situation, event or subject.
Weblogs are also referred to as
logs, Blogs, Web logs and so on. There appears to be no single standard way or
referring to them.
Using a general search engine
The easiest approach is simply
to go to Google or some other search engine and run a search for weblog
<insert subject area of interest>. For example, a search at Google for
weblog librarian results in over 50,000 results, so you might want to add in a
few more terms to narrow that down a little further. Google has a directory
category that covers weblogs at:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Yahoo
also has an offering at:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Weblogs/
(This is in my opinion a better collection than the Google offering)
Google Blog search It's
Google so it works, and it's actually very fast indeed - one of their best
offerings
Technorati Classic blog
search engine, lots of functionality including trending
Icerocket is a reasonable option
There has recently been a rise in utilities that allow you to create and store your own searches and let other people make use of them. This is particularly useful if you are dealing with a group of clients who want to do their own searching, but are not sure which resources are the best ones to use. The following is a list of a few that you might want to try for yourself:
Which search engine
when? This is a compilation of some of my preferred engines, arranged by
type.
A larger compliation,
including ones that are maybe not quite so useful.
My Pagecast of search
engines - kept very up to date
My
Search weblog lists search
engines as I find them.
This article/training resource is © Phil Bradley May 2008. Please do NOT copy this article without my permission.