09.30 - 09.45 Introduction to the course, trainer and delegates
09.45
- 10.30 The case against Google
10.30 - 10.45 Which search engine to use -
coverage of engines
10.45 - 11.00 Coffee
11.00 - 13.00 Different types of
search engines and alternatives to Google
13.00 - 14.00 Lunch
14.00 -
14.30 Re-ranking engines, visual search engines
14.30 - 15.00 Country based
information, virtual libraries, academic searching
15.00 - 15.15
Coffee
15.15 - 16.00 Image and audio search, podcast searching, site
searching
16.00 - 16.30 Weblog search engines, creating search engines and
saving RSS searches
16.30 - 16.45 Roundup and last questions
None of them, and all of them. The search engine decoder is useful in telling you about the links between engines. Be aware of the difference in results:
The database size is comparable to Google and in many cases the
relevance ranking results are superior - especially with images.
Some of the
search syntax is far superior to that offered by Google.
My 'How to do anything with
Yahoo!' Squidoo lens.
Ask has made considerable retrograde steps recently and has limited
functionality, particularly for UK users. In fact, it's very hard to get into
the US version (.com) any longer, but if you follow this link:
http://www.ask.com/?o=312&l=dir
it'll get you there.
Smart
answers is great for quick reference
Image searching is
superior to Google
Quick links to narrow and refine searches or to expand
them. This Sean Connery
search is a good example.
Quick view/binoculars thumbshot (only available in
the US)
RSS smart
answers which you can test with a
search for
me, and see the most recent material that I've written about in my
weblog
Maps and
directions functionality is excellent though this is no longer available in
the UK
The Search tools on the home page are excellent
Very powerful search engine with a database of circa 8 billion
pages.
Strong use of search syntax - proximity search (NEAR and
NEAR/x)
Use of wildcard at the end of a sentence - librar* in a word for
pattern matching - /psyc*ist/
Approximate spelling and phonetic
spelling
Thumbnails of pages
Excellent opportunities for refining
searches
Basic start page
Microsoft's search engine.
Has a good current database
Basic
functionality is the same as the other search engines, but advanced search does
have a couple of interesting wrinkles; specifically re-ranking by currency,
popularity and exactness.
Can save searches as RSS feeds by adding
&format=rss to a URL that comes up when you've run a search.
From AlltheWeb, which is owned by Yahoo.
Results are suggested as you
type.
Refine option makes suggests that actually are useful, though
limited.
This has now closed.
SearchMash (Google)
AlltheWeb (Yahoo)
AltaVista (Yahoo)
MsDewey (Live/Microsoft)
Ask X (Ask)
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:
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/
The only multi/meta search engines that I ever use are
Ixquick at www.ixquick.com, for its
slight emphasis on UK based sites, and Kartoo
at www.kartoo.combecause its rather different!
The advantage of using a
multi search engine is that you will obtain a much more comprehensive overview
of available pages, much more quickly than you'll ever get if you search one
engine then another and so on. The major disadvantage is that you can really
only use a low common denominator when it comes to searching; advanced syntax
will not work, because many engines will not understand them. It's best to
stick to phrase, + and - searching.
Alternatively, try Clusty at
http://clusty.com/ or iZito at
http://www.izito.com/
Others worth
trying are:
Joongel
ZapMeta
Surfwax
Trovando
Whonu is quite complicated from the
look of it, but worth a try.
Zuula
Search goes through some of the major search engines for you
Fast Eagle which used to be calledCrossEngine which used to be called
MrSapo.
These will find results/resources that you cannot find elsewhere because the data is contained in a database that can only be accessed via a specific search box on the website. All that traditional search engines can do is to index the content on the page, they can't run searches themselves, and then index the content that they find. Consequently, if you want to find specific information, such as a phone number or genealogical information you can use a search engine to find a likely website, and then use the search engine on the site to find the specific data you require. Some multi search engines such as ez2find may well suggest specific resources.
There are also specific search engines that you can use to search the hidden or the invisible web:
Delicious great for social
bookmarking and also add /tag/searchterm at the end for specific
searching
FURL is another social
bookmarking service
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
Slideshare for powerpoint
presentations
Spurl is like Furl
Trexy allows you to save 'trails' with their
toolbar
Social Mention
TuSavvy
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 offers a tag cloud based on
results
Ujiko provides an interesting
approach.
SearchCrystal
uses a dartboard approach
Touchgraph graphs
Google results
RedZee uses a
scrolling thumbnail approach
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! Some search engines are better than others at this, and I'd suggest both Exalead and Accoona as ways of doing a good geographical search.
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.
Infomine for scholarly internet
resource collections
Scirus
provides access to scientific information
Google Scholar provides access to
scholarly articles
SMEALSearch for Academic
business information (Now known as BizSeer)
Healia is designed for
professionals, but great for all of us.
SearchMedica for GPs
Live
Booksearch
Shakespeare
searched from Clusty
Live Search academic is from Microsoft
Turbo10
allows you to search over 800 specialised search engines
Complete Planet has access to over
70,000 resources
OAISter has an
emphasis on academic information
Direct Search from Gary
Price is no longer updated, but still has useful information
Yahoo Search has over 1.5 billion images
Fagan
Finder lists several dozen good engines
Flickr is an excellent resource, though most
images are copyright, so be careful when considering using them
Stockphotos is a resource for
copyright free images, but still check the licence information
Picsearch has almost 2 billion
images
Devilfinder is not bad,
but display is poor
Cydral is a small
search engine, I don't personally use it.
Morguefile provides access to stock
royalty free images
Pixsy searches
images and videos and displays by relevance or date
Like - find things that look like other things.
Still a test version
Retrievr - find things by drawing
them.
Xcavator is another drawing
type search engine, still in demo only mode
Yahoo audio search
The ear-archives are mainly
television/film related
Commercial breaks
and beats to find out what music was used on television adverts
What's that called? is similar to
the previous engine
FindSounds is a
search engine to find sounds, sound effects and musical instrument
samples
Check with other search engines to see if they have an audio
option.
PodZinger
Blinkx (also other multimedia search)
Podscope finds words spoken in podcasts
The
Wayback machine may be able to show you an archived version of a site
Better Whois shows ownership for top
level domains
Alexa provides traffic
details and related sites
UpMyStreet has information on a
wide variety of different aspects of particular areas.
StreetMap is mainly for maps and
directions
Freesearch isn't one
that I've used myself.
Live Local Search
from Microsoft
Sherriff Ratings
allows you to find and comment on companies
UK House prices does what it says on
the tin.
UK Local is a Yellow Pages type
affair
Online
Books Page 25,000+ books
Bibliomania a smaller
collection, dealing with classic texts
eBrary is a commecial product
Project Gutenberg has over
19,000 titles available
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:
There are a variety of these available, though they are very variable in quality, and it's potluck if you're going to find an answer to your question. Wouldn't use these for serious research, but for simple, quick answers, or opinions, they may be worth trying.
Yahoo answers
Yahoo UK answers
Otavo quests
Ask Philosophers
Ask metafilter
Wondir
Answerbag
Microsoft
Live QnA
Yedda
RSS is short for 'Rich Site Summary' or 'Really Simple Syndication' and
is a way of getting a newsfeed, or a weblog, or updates to a page for example
into a common format that can be used in a variety of different settings in a
variety of different ways. Some search engines, such as
Live, Google News,
Icerocket,
AllTh.at allow users to save
searches into an RSS format.
These searches have to be saved into another
resource, such as a start page like Pageflakes or an RSS reader like
Bloglines.