Transcript Search Engines

Searching the Internet
Our Quest for Knowledge in
Space
Internet Search Tools
 Directories (Collections)
 Search Engines
 Meta-Search Engines
 Invisible Web Gateways
 Portals
 Asking “Experts”
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Directories
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Directory Characteristics
 Organizes resources
into logical subject
groups
 Simple group
headings so the user
can “drill down” to
locate sub-divisions of
information and sites
 Humans are involved
in the creation of the
Directory
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Yahoo
 Yahoo is an example of a Web Site that is both a
Directory and a Search Engine
 It is like an enormous yellow pages phone book
 Yahoo is an excellent place to start – particularly
if you are looking for information about specific
organizations or specific topics
 Yahoo is not, however, a complete collection of
Internet resources – not every organization or
everyone is listed
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California State Page
 Designed to help meet the basic
information access for all citizens of
California.
 Census data
 Links to many high quality health resources
 Gateway to Federal as well as State
information
 One of the best Internet starting points for
California information
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Librarians’ Index to the Internet
 The Librarians’ Index to the Internet is a
searchable, annotated subject directory of
Internet resources selected and evaluated by
librarians for their usefulness to Library users.
 It is meant to be used by both librarians and
non-librarians as a reliable and efficient guide to
described and evaluated Internet resources.
 This is an excellent collection of reviewed and
evaluated resources.
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Search Engines
 Characteristics
 Considerations
 Strategy Development
 Refining Techniques
 Examples
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Search Engine Characteristics
 Searches by keyword
 Creates web site databases by searching
the web by robots and computer programs
 Economic criteria can determine a place in
the search results
 Although there are similarities, no two
Search Engines are exactly the same
(Kmart v. Wal-Mart)
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You Need More than A Search
Engine
 Not all of the Internet is indexed
 You should expect to miss information
which is on the Internet
 Current information is often not available
through a search engine
 Many Web Pages are restricted or feeonly
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Searching Strategy
 Be specific. The keywords that best
describe what you are looking for are the
way to start
 Scan the results of your search for clues
(even poor results can give you clues)
 How would rephrasing your search change
the results?
 Is there anything usable in the results?
 Fifteen-Minute Test: Know when to give up
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Typing Your Search
 If you are looking for a two-word name, force the Search
Engine to treat the item as a phrase
 When you enclose the words in quotes the Engine will look for
the words next to each other
 If your search consistently produces the same poor
results, exclude words to narrow your results.
 Use the plus sign (+) to require a word and the minus sign (-) to
exclude a word
 Host Limiting
 If you are looking for government information, limit your results to
only government sites
 Type host:gov in your search to limit the results to only sites
containing .gov in their address
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Google
 Google is “the” search tool
 Very easy to use – Simple format
 Results are often close to the desired
results
 Although, the quality of the information is
not guaranteed
 Most effective when the search term is
kept simple
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Virtual Reference Libraries
 University of California at Berkeley Reference page with links to University libraries,
collections, electronic databases and academic
disciplines
 Internet Public Library - Replicates a library
reference room "without walls" on the Internet.
Contains links to reference materials covering
computers, law, science, entertainment and
education
 iTools - Basic reference tools such as
dictionaries and word lookups, as well as
language translators
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Meta Search Engines
 All searches are sent to several search engines
or directories at the same time
 Results from different tools are displayed on one
page.
 Not all of the Internet is indexed, you should
expect some misinformation
 You cannot use advanced features from specific
search engines, since those features may not be
supported by the meta-index tools
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Meta-Index Examples
 MetaCrawler – An excellent searching tool that
allows you to search many of the major search
tools at once. Particularly useful Power Search
tab that allows you to pick and choose which
tools are searched
 DogPile – Customizable meta-index
 RefDesk – Unbelievable resource for everything
Internet
 Langenberg.Com – Simple collection of search
boxes to different resources
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Invisible Web (The Deep Web)
 Regardless of which tools you use, there
will always be information you will be
missing
 This data is referred to as the Invisible
Web, since it is often invisible to most
search tools
 That doesn’t mean that you can’t find
information on the Invisible Web, it means
that you might have to use different tools
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Invisible Web Considerations
 Information is often overlooked by traditional
search tools for two basic reasons:
 Internet Directories, Search Engines and MetaSearch Engines do not gather information from every
page available on every web site.
 Information in databases (such as library catalogs)
are not available through search engines.
 Search engines succeed by gathering documents, but
with databases, there are no documents to gather
 As more web sites use databases to store
information, the amount of information available
through traditional search tools will become less and
less useful.
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Invisible Web Strategy
 Finding information on the Invisible Web is not
an easy task, but it may be the only way to find
the information that you need
 Many Internet searchers give up when they do
not find information using a basic Search Engine
 Before giving up, you should try some Invisible
Web search tools
 Using Invisible Web tools is a two-step process:
 Perform a Subject Search to find an appropriate site
(or sites)
 Perform a search of the site that looks like it will be
responsive to your needs
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Access to Invisible Databases
 Vivisimo – Document clustering
 Complete Planet - Collection of searchable
databases
 InfoMine – A collection created by
librarians. The sites are well-catalogued
and allow expanding searches based on
related subjects and keywords
 Freeality Internet Search - Popular
databases
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Portals
 Portals are communities of Web Sites organized
around similar interests
 Suite 101.com - built by over 1,000 volunteer
“experts.” offers distractions like chat and
friendly, popular information as well as the
serious
 Portals Community - A portal of portals
 FAST Search – (a/k/a AlltheWeb) Currently
includes more than 200 million unique URLs in
its database
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Experts
 About.com is a site of self-appointed experts in
specialized areas.
 The experts create lists of sites and current
events about that topic area
 The site can be helpful if you are interested in
delving into a particular topic with some depth
 AllExperts.com - Experts who volunteer to
provide free answers to your individual
questions
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Who Owns The Site?
 After you have found information on the Internet,
it becomes important to know the source
 Sometimes it is obvious – and, sometimes it is
not at all obvious
 When all else fails, look up the web site owner,
and if necessary contact that company to verify
the source of the information
 There is only one site to use for this, and that is -
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Network Solutions
 Every .com/.net/.org web site is registered
with Network Solutions
 To find the name of the owner of a specific
site, use Network Solutions’ WHOIS
Lookup Service.
 Using WHOIS allows you to type in a web
address and retrieve basic contact
information about the owner of that
domain name
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Search Tool Changes
 Search Engine Watch – Search tools are
constantly changing. Search Engine Watch
keeps track of those changes, both in terms of
changing names as well as newly implemented
features.
 Subscribing to the email newsletter will keep you
informed of the latest hints, tips, features and
existence of search tools
 LII New This Week Mailing List – A weekly
email newsletter listing recently-evaluated and
interesting new web sites
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Site Changes
 Search Engine Showdown - compilation of
studies, reports and news compiled by Greg
Notess
 The Botspot - Focus on Artificial Intelligence.
“Bots" - multi-purpose, multi-site, multi-resource,
and interactive tools for locating information
about the Web, advanced Web programming,
and Web searching.
 Browse "Bots by Category" or read "What's a bot?"
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The Future
Our Quest for Knowledge in Space
Continues…