Transcript Slide 1
DEFINITIONS
Search Engine
Web Crawler
A search engine is an information retrieval system
designed to help find information stored on a computer
system.
A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the
World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner.
Metadata
Metadata (meta data, meta-data, or sometimes meta
information) is “data about data.”
Source: Wikipedia
INTERNET SEARCHING
Characteristics
Crawler-Based Search Engines
Crawler-based search engines, like Google, create their
listings automatically.
They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people search through
what they have found.
Human-Powered Directories
A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory,
depends on humans for its listings.
You submit a short description to the directory for your entire
site, or editors write one for sites they review.
A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.
Most all search engines use:
“
Search results that contain exact phrasing
Using the minus sign omits certain words
-
*
“
Using asterisk tells that you are looking for additional terms within that
search
Toyota * will yield many different Toyota car and truck models
Just 'Toyota' will return the official website and related pages.
or
States that you want to search for one of two phrases
COMMANDS
In Title: ____
Telling Google to only return pages with the query
enclosed in the page title
Site: ____
useful when looking for jobs/products that are hard to come by
Search results only from the specified website
‘+’
Yield results that definitely include the words after the
plus sign
Toyota +News will yield only news stories about the car
manufacturer
Advanced Searches
Search within the results command
On the search results page, you can further narrow your search by
clicking the link 'Search Within the Results' towards the bottom of
the page. This enables you to enter another search term and only
look for matching results in the existing results.
Microsoft Bing bought Yahoo Search
Similar search grammar rules as Google
Suggested Search function
Appears on the right of the suggestions gives you keywords and searches
related to your main search.
Yahoo Command ‘!’
When you search a term, previous searches from other users will appear
below the text entry box.
Explore Concepts function
Now use the same commands and rules
They do index and search the web differently
Will skip by the results page and go to the most relevant results first.
Similar to the “I’m feeling lucky” feature of Google
Bing
Shows fewer results than Google
Hover your mouse over the results and can summon extra information.
Automatically detects your IP to provide relevant results
Bing
Shows fewer results than Google
If it is certain it understand what you’re searching for
Hover your mouse over the results and you can
summon extra information.
Automatically detects your IP to provide relevant results
Best known people search engines
Most useful
Name
Email
Username
Phone
For people with a weak online presence or just a poplar name you may
have to sift through a lot of results until you find the one you're looking
for
Fairly simple to search
Must sign in
8 main categories to
search
People
Pages
Groups
Apps
Events
Web Pages
Keep searching simple
People, Groups or
Organizations
Professional social network
Used to house portfolios
Great place to find people
People
Jobs
Companies
Answers
Inbox
Groups
Ultimate directory to find where people and
businesses are located.
Pay a small fee to use
Database of suspect telemarketers and scammers
who have often rang people before
These numbers eventually become notorious and
are submitted to the database for all to be
warned.
So if you get a suspect call, it may be worth a search.
BitSnoop is a new Torrent search engine
Different than other search engines
It only returns results that have been filtered and checked for
bad links, missing or wrong content
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol
used for distributing large amounts of data.
One of the most common protocols for transferring large
files, and it has been estimated that it accounts for
approximately 27-55% of all Internet traffic (depending
on geographical location) as of February 2009. (Wikipedia)
Specific niche
World’s best resource of archives, information,
and document resources.
Can search ‘Weather Ireland December 22, 1985
Once you present your task in an objective
manner, it should be able to compute it
Entering a complicated mathematical problem will
return a detailed answer with step-by-step actions to
solve it.
Excellent tool for students and people compiling
reports
statistics, historical information, science and math answers
as well as everyday random facts
RetailMeNot
Coupon Codes, Printable Coupons and Grocery
Coupons
Price Grabber
databases stretches over 40,000 stores in almost every
western country including the US, UK, France, Holland,
Canada and some countries further afield such as India and
Australia.
Best price comparison website
Google Product Search
Works in the same way as the regular search engine,
except that it caters specifically for products
Flickr
best bet if you want high quality photographs
Tags are the main different between Flickr and other image
searches
Google Images
offers images from all over the web
very high resolution and worthy of a desktop wallpaper
Basic search works the same as the normal Google
however you can tweak your results by using the sidebar options
Upload an image to search by instead of text
Creative Commons Search
search for content all over the web that has a creative
commons license
means you can use the image so long as you're not directly profiting
from it
YouTube
Easily searchable
Users upload
Bing Video Search
developing quite the repertoire for its video searching
Similar to Yahoo and Google
TeacherTube
Educational friendly videos
Downloadable with account
Watch Know Learn
Educational videos for k-12
Blogs
Job-Search-Engine
Yahoo Jobs
Deezer
Songza
Software
Download.com
Flickr
PicItUp
Shopping
eBay
Amazon
Images
Vimeo
YouTube
Webshops
Music
IsoHunt
Video
Jobs
Google Books
Scribd
Torrents
eBooks
Regator.com
Books
Retailmenot
Prices
PriceGrabber
Always keep the search terms broad to start
then narrow it down if your subject isn't popular.
Don't use more terms than necessary
Most search engines also act as converters.
So by entering 500g in ounces, a special field towards
the top will give you a conversion with search results
displayed below.
This works for all units such as currency, temperature,
weight, length etc...
By searching for a stock symbol (i.e. a code for a
particular company on the stock market) you'll be
returned with info relating to that company and
its shares.
Current news stories will always be indexed first
if you're searching for an old news story enter a date
after your search query.