Alternative Search Tools

Web Search Academy Internet Librarian International 26th October 2011 Alternative Search Tools: 

Web Search Academy Internet Librarian International 26th October 2011 Alternative Search Tools Karen Blakeman http://www.rba.co.uk/ Twitter: @ karenblakeman karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 1

Why not Google?: 

Why not Google? Google mangling your search correcting correct search terms weird automatic synonym searching not searching for all of your terms “personalisation” Best results may be at the bottom of your results list other search tools rank and order documents in different ways Google can’t look inside databases or password protected areas Specialist information requires specialist tools 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 2

Bing and Yahoo: 

Bing and Yahoo Yahoo now uses Bing’s database and ranking algorithms for most country versions Many of the Advanced Search commands are similar to Google’s see Search Tools Summary and Comparison http://www.rba.co.uk/search/compare.shtml Bing advanced search screen minimalist - use commands detailed list at Advanced Operator Reference http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff795620.aspx (some no longer work) Also beware – “Bing Adds Adaptive Search, Customized by Your Search History - Search Engine Watch” http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2109647/Bing-Adds-Adaptive-Search-Customized-by-Your-Search-History 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 3

Bing and Yahoo: 

Bing and Yahoo 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 4 Bing and Yahoo starting to behave like Google and automatically “correcting” what they think are mistakes Need to prefix terms with + signs or use “..” around terms to force exact match (Google now only allows “..”)

Bing: 

Bing Most of the interesting developments and features are only available in the US version Results tend to be more consumer/retail focused unless using advanced search features Coverage not identical to Google’s - sometimes yields important unique content, especially in research and business Often more up to date than Google 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 5

Bing Maps: 

Bing Maps http://www.bing.com/maps/ “Classic” http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/ uses Sliverlight more interactive automatically changes type of view as you zoom in Multimap , Birdseye, Aerial, Streetside (not available for all towns or countries), Ordnance Survey Map view “After Little Resistance in Germany, Bing Expands Streetside Photos Across Europe” http://searchengineland.com/after-little-resistance-in-germany-bing-expands-streetside-photos-across-europe-96351 Often has problems finding correct location or finding anything at all have to try various combinations of terms e.g. Portsmouth Central Library instead of just Portsmouth Library 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 6

Bing Maps: 

Bing Maps 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 7 ??

Exalead: 

Exalead http://www.exalead.com/search/ Demonstration for their enterprise search Small database Frequency of update? Has NEAR/n command for proximity searching Link command that actually works Supports full Boolean filetype, site, intitle, inurl But phonetic and approximate spelling unreliable 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 8

DuckDuckGo: 

DuckDuckGo http://duckduckgo.com/ No tracking, no “filter bubble” site: inbody: intitle: filetype: sort:date to sort by date (uses results from Blekko) region:cc (e.g. de) to boost a country Syntax and keyboard shortcuts at http://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html Maths, conversions, programming syntax and shortcuts http://duckduckgo.com/tech.html answer at top of results usually from Wolfram Alpha !bang commands https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 9

Blekko: 

Blekko http://blekko.com/ slashtags for sorting by date (/date), searching for images (/images) and videos (/videos) Use public slashtags to search a group of web sites covering a particular topic or type of site e.g. /library Or create your own to search your specified list of sites (similar to Google Custom Search Engines) wind turbine electricity generation /karenblakeman/renewable “Musings about librarianship: Using Blekko to search across thousands of library sites” http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2010/11/using-blekko-to-search-across-thousands.html 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 10

Blekko: 

Blekko Does not always search for all of your terms Cannot do filetype, inurl, intitle searches Drop down menu next to page in results list for site search (or use /site) similar pages (or use /similar) inbound links to the page (or use /links) 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 11

Wolfram Alpha http://www.wolframalpha.com/: 

Wolfram Alpha http://www.wolframalpha.com/ “Computational Knowledge Engine” Very good for calculations and conversions Assumes your location from your IP address Available features and search options change depending on your location Have to ask the question in the right way 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 12

Wolfram alpha: 

Wolfram alpha Curated data and information Can be very out of date Sometimes totally wrong! No reference to original source - only a list that is intended as a guide to further sources of information 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 13

Google Scholar: 

Google Scholar A useful place to start your research or if you are looking for a specific paper but..... No source list, not comprehensive and omits many key scientific publications Both peer-reviewed and un-reviewed articles, pre-prints, institutional repositories, references to books, citations Does not use publishers’ meta data Author search unreliable, search on year of publication unreliable Sometimes does weird things with your search terms Peter Jasco - Google Scholar's Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6698580.html 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 14

Microsoft Academic Search: 

Microsoft Academic Search http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 15

Microsoft Academic Search: 

Microsoft Academic Search Problems coverage sometimes gets the author completely wrong “Will the Real Scott Wilson Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up” http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/will-the-real-scott-wilson-please-stand-up-please-stand-up/ 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 16 M Edwards should be Martin Edwards not Maria-Benedicta Edwards

COnnecting REpositories - CORE: 

COnnecting REpositories - CORE http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk / “UK’s first open access full-text search engine to aid research JISC” http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2011/09/openaccess.aspx 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 17

Selected specialist tools - URLs: 

Selected specialist tools - URLs http://www.chemspider.com/ http://biznar.com/ http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/ http://philpapers.org/ http://www.mednar.com/ http://www.scirus.com/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ http://www.healthmash.com/ 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 18

Selected specialist tools: 

Selected specialist tools 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 19

And a few more ....: 

And a few more .... 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 20

Yahoo Finance: 

Yahoo Finance 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 21

Google can seriously damage your news : 

Google can seriously damage your news Experiment by Mary Ellen Bates Is Google really filtering my news? - Librarian of Fortune http://www.librarianoffortune.com/librarian_of_fortune/2011/09/is-google-really-filtering-my-news.html Highlights More than 25% of stories showed up in only one searcher’s results Almost one in five searchers saw a story that no one else saw Only 12% of searchers saw the same 3 stories in the same order And it’s about to get worse – “Google News Launches "Standout" Tag for Featured Content” http://searchengineland.com/google-news-launches-standout-tag-for-featured-content-94256 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 22

News - Silobreaker.com: 

News - Silobreaker.com 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 23

Silobreaker - networks: 

Silobreaker - networks 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 24 Can change the emphasis using the slider bars

Statistics http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/ : 

Statistics http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/ 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 25

The Guardian: 

The Guardian Guardian data store - data journalism and data visualization h ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/data Data and analysis on topics that are in the news, links to the original datasets are provided Guardian World Government Data http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 26

Zanran: 

Zanran http://www.zanran.com/ “ Zanran – a new data search engine” http://awareci.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/zanran-a-new-data-search-engine/ 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 27

Want to explore other stuff? Zuula.com: 

Want to explore other stuff? Zuula.com Type in your search once and work your way through the search tools Can edit search tools order and remove unwanted ones 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 28

Suffering Google withdrawal symptoms?: 

Suffering Google withdrawal symptoms? 26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 29 Decide which sites you want to search and design your own Google custom search engine

Create your own search engine without Google: 

Create your own search engine without Google Blekko.com Create a slashtag Musings about librarianship: Using Blekko to search across thousands of library sites http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2010/11/using-blekko-to-search-across-thousands.html Gigablast Custom Topic Search http://gigablast.com/cts.html up to 500 sites Rollyo.com powered by Yahoo maximum of 25 sites per Searchroll doesn’t work for me most of the time  26/10/2011 www.rba.co.uk 30