Internet Librarian International 2008 :Internet Librarian International 2008 Maintaining Search Qualityor How to Beat the Search Engine Crunch Karen BlakemanRBA Information Services 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 1 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License Photo by Florian Knust http://www.flickr.com/photos/florianknust/471111469/


Search engine meltdown :Search engine meltdown AlltheWeb Livesearch - gone AlltheWeb itself still alive but no further development (uses Yahoo databases) Ask Big News - gone Live.com link and linkdomain commands – now you see ‘em, now you don’t Academic Live, Live Books – gone Yahoo NOT command, parentheses, Mindset - gone Exalead Approximate spelling (transformed into smellslike, spell slike!) ‘regular expression’ internal masking of letters - gone Accoona – gone http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2008/10/05/accoona-is-no-more/ 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 2


What’s new? :What’s new? Google Knol, much improved Google Finance, lots of tweaks to existing services Ask Yet another makeover, new layout, return to “Ask a Question MSE360 http://www.mse360.com Silobreaker - http://www.silobreaker.com/ Search visualisation tools Quintura, AllPlus, Cluuz …… Lots of Web 2.0 ‘stuff’ Cuil Cuil not so Cool http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2008/07/28/cuil-not-so-cool/ 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 3


Search techniques – a reminder :Search techniques – a reminder Search engines still search for all of your terms by default but note that Google also looks for terms in ‘links to’ Double quote marks around phrases e.g. “climate change” To exclude pages containing a term, precede the term with a minus sign (-) Boolean search OR, AND, NOT must use capital letters for the operators only OR works in Google and even that does not work well Live.com, Exalead and MSE360 are best (Yahoo has withdrawn NOT, and nested Boolean) for example chemical engineer AND (inurl:cv OR intitle:cv) AND (oil OR petroleum) 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 4


Search techniques – a reminder (2) :Search techniques – a reminder (2) Focus your search on areas of the document inurl: for example “process engineer” inurl:cv intitle: for example “process engineer” intitle:cv Search sites or domains using the site: command e.g. site:statistics.gov.uk, site:gov.uk Imagine what you would like to appear in your ideal document and include those terms in your strategy Ask your question or partially answer your question in your strategy “How fast can a hippopotamus run?” “A hippopotamus can run at” 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 5


Search techniques – a reminder (3) :Search techniques – a reminder (3) Repeat your key search terms in your strategy chocolate production UK france belgium chocolate production UK france belgium belgium belgium give different results Change the order of your terms chocolate production Belgium Switzerland production Belgium Switzerland chocolate different results See the summary and comparison chart for the major search engines at http://www.rba.co.uk/search/compare.pdf and http://www.rba.co.uk/search/compare.shtml 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 6


File format search :File format search Use advanced search options to limit your search to file types or format: pdf or doc for government or industry/market reports xls for data and statistics ppt or pdf for presentations Run in at least Google, Yahoo and Live Looking for experts on a topic or presentations? Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/ authorSTREAM http://www.authorstream.com/ YouTube http://www.youtube.com/ 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 7


Do not capitalise commands :Do not capitalise commands Google site:charity-commission.gov.uk grants - about 5,950 Site:charity-commission.gov.uk grants - 3 (all my presentations giving this as an example!) Google sees the capital ‘S’ and treats the strategy as a phrase Yahoo site:charity-commission.gov.uk grants - 1,020 Site:charity-commission.gov.uk grants - 495,000 With a capital ‘S’ Yahoo treats all parts of the search including the domain as separate key words 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 8


Unique Google search features :Unique Google search features Automatically looks for variations on your terms to stop it, precede your terms with plus signs e.g. air +pollution or put your term in double quotes e.g. “Smyth” Synonym search precede your search terms with a tilde (~) Numeric range search now on advanced search page can be weights, distances, years, prices Command line syntax is search term(s) first value..second value unit of measurement TV advertising spend forecasts 2005..2012 toblerone 1..5 kg 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 9


Unique Google search features (2) :Unique Google search features (2) Proximity use the asterisk (*) to stand in for one or more terms macular * degeneration picks up macular retinal degeneration macula disciform degeneration macular choroidal degeneration macular vitelliform degeneration macular pigmentary degeneration adding extra * changes the results add, remove spaces between * * to change ranking of results why does it do that – who knows? no information on maximum number of terms of separation 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 10


Firefox – Customise Google Add-on :Firefox – Customise Google Add-on Adds numbers to Google search results (position counter) Links to other search engines Stream search result pages Add links to Wayback Machine 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 11


Use something other than Google :Use something other than Google 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 12


Ask :Ask http://www.ask.com/, http://www.ask.co.uk/ Suggestions for narrowing down or expanding your search Particularly good for blogs Big News gone US search interface revamped new Q&A tab 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 13


Exalead :Exalead http://www.exalead.com/ http://www.exalead.co.uk/ Supports wild cards asterisk (*) at the end of a word pollut* finds pollute, pollutant, polluting etc. NEAR - finds words within 16 terms of one another NEAR/n finds words within n number of terms one another climate NEAR/3 change Approximate spelling, phonetic search (?) Regular expression (internal masking of letters) Feedback from users is that there is more European content, which seems to be given priority 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 14


Live Search :Live Search http://www.live.com/ Results tend to be more consumer oriented Has the most up to date database Possibly has the most extensive database of web pages Good image search option Feed command for locating RSS feeds on a specified web site site:bbc.co.uk feed:bbc.co.uk Revamped interface but no improvement in advanced search screen Link commands gone Axed Link commands, Books and Academic Live  22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 15


Yahoo! :Yahoo! http://search.yahoo.co.uk/ http://search.yahoo.com/ Boolean AND, OR NOT no longer available – use the minus sign. parentheses do not work Indexes first 500 K of a document (Google 101 K) Square brackets round terms to pick up terms on the page in the order specified [carbon emissions trading] Region command (inherited from Inktomi) region: e.g. region:europe, region:mediterranean others are africa, asia, centralamerica, northamerica, southamerica, mideast, southeastasia, downunder 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 16


MSE360.com :MSE360.com http://www.mse360.com/ See reviews at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2008/10/05/mse360-search/ http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2008/10/06/update-on-mse360/ Full Boolean nested search options No advanced search screen but can use commands e.g. filetype: , site; ‘Tiered’ results – Web, Wikipedia, blogs Customise results layout Tags sites that you have already visited (Firefox only at present) Quick to respond to bug reports and fix problems 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 17


Zuula.com :Zuula.com 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 18


Intelways.com :Intelways.com 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 19


News :News Search engine news options e.g. Yahoo, Google have only the last 30 days of free news advanced search options limited and unreliable no source list, and sources frequently change key industry publications may not be included Google News Archive http://www.google.com/archivesearch some sources going back 200 years many articles are priced (before you buy check other sources) Silobreaker - http://www.silobreaker.com/ Chipwrapper - http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/ 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 20


Silobreaker http://www.silobreaker.com :Silobreaker http://www.silobreaker.com covers free resources news, blogs, video, images market trends geographical location of stories people networks 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 21


Chipwrapper http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk :Chipwrapper http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk Google Custom Search engine Searches everything available on 15 free UK News Sites No date sort option but typing in the year usually works 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 22


Yahoo Finance :Yahoo Finance 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 23


Google Finance :Google Finance 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 24


Let RSS take the strain :Let RSS take the strain 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 25


Blog searching :Blog searching Google Blogsearch http://www.google.com/blogsearch Ask – Blogs and feeds http://www.ask.com/ Exalead http://www.exalead.com/ limit search to Site Type Blog Live Search http://www.live.com/ and select Feeds Blog and feed search engines Technorati.com, Blogpulse.com 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 26


Blogpulse search and trends :Blogpulse search and trends 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 27 Click on the graph to see ‘trends’


Blogpulse trends :Blogpulse trends 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 28


Twitter :Twitter http://www.twitter.com/ Micro-blogging - 140 characters per ‘tweet’ What are people saying about you? Oh dear! 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 29


Searching Twitter and Tweets :Searching Twitter and Tweets How Companies Use Twitter to Bolster Their Brands - BusinessWeek http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2008/tc2008095_320491.htm Searching public tweets http://www.twitterment.com/ (?) http://www.tweetscan.com/ (?) Searching hashtags e.g. #ili2008 http://search.twitter.com/ http://www.hashtags.org/ - deceased? http://www.twemes.com/ - delayed reporting so not ideal for keeping up with conference tweets real-time 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 30


Twemes – http://twemes.com/ :Twemes – http://twemes.com/ 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 31


http://search.twitter.com/ :http://search.twitter.com/ 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 32


pipl :pipl http://www.pipl.com/ Review at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2007/05/05/pipl-people-search-beta/ Searches ‘hidden’ web + Google search blog search, Google Groups, LinkedIn, Flickr, Google Scholar, Electoral Roll, Directories, Amazon, Hoovers, Zoominfo etc. Google web search results not the same as an ordinary Google search – they incorporate terms such as resume, CV 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 33


Zoominfo - Karen Blakeman’s verified profile :Zoominfo - Karen Blakeman’s verified profile 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 34 Information ‘verified’ by Karen Blakeman View the ‘references’ (web pages) to see the information in context


LinkedIn :LinkedIn 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 35


Facebook :Facebook 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 36


Cluuz :Cluuz http://www.cluuz.com/ “Cluuz … core technology understands the relationship between the entities, terms, or persons searched leading to more relevant, easy to understand search results” Not totally intuitive but the network visualisation is ‘cool’ The links in the network visualisation do not always relate to the same person or organisation but they are usually working in a similar field or subject area Results change from one day to the next, one hour to the next, but still worth a look 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 37


Cluuz :Cluuz 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 38


Quintura.com :Quintura.com 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 39


AllPlus.com :AllPlus.com 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 40


Create your own search engine :Create your own search engine Examples: AlacraSearch http://www.alacra.com/alacrasearch pipl http://www.pipl.com/ Chipwrapper http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/ Google Custom Search Engines http://www.google.com/coop/cse can be hosted on your own site or on Google http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/energy.shtml http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=014304212364962740038:tui4ebh5r_a 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 41


Slide 42:‘Disappearing’ pages Search engine cache copies Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask, Exalead Wayback machine http://www.archive.org/ from 1996 to about 6 months ago navigate the archived site or type in the full URL of the document if known Firefox users install the Resurrect Pages add-on 27 November 2006 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 42 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 42


Wayback Machine :Wayback Machine 22 October 2008 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 43


Slide 44:22 October 2008 44 Karen Blakeman Tel: 0118 947 2256, +44 118 947 2256 karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk http://www.rba.co.uk/ blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/ Facebook – Karen Blakeman Twitter: karenblakeman http://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman Photo Nachoman-au. Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license versions 2.5, 2.0, and 1.0 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lotto_Skyworks_Applecross.jpg