All posts by Karen Blakeman

I have worked in the information profession for over twenty years and have been a freelance consultant since 1989. My company (RBA Information Services) provides training and consultancy on the use of the Internet, and on accessing and managing information resources. Prior to setting up RBA I worked at the Colindale Central Public Health Laboratory, and then spent ten years in the Pharmaceutical and Health Care industry before moving to the International management consultancy group Strategic Planning Associates. I edit and publish an electronic newsletter called Tales from the Terminal Room. Other publications include Search Strategies for the Internet. I am a Fellow of CILIP: The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, a member of the UK eInformation Group (UKeiG).
Google

Google search bar moves

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Just when you thought you had sussed out the additional search options on Google’s results page Google decides to move them. Instead of appearing to the left of your results page the menu has been moved to the top, leaving a blank space where the old menus used to be.

Google Search Options New Menu 1

 

There are the usual options such as images, maps, shopping and videos and clicking on More reveals a drop down menu for News, Books, Places, Blogs etc.

 

Google Search Options New Menu 2

 

It begins to get confusing when you click on Search tools and an extra row of options appears.

 

Google Search Options New Menu 3

 

It is not obvious what the “The Web” does but clicking on it gives you two options. “The Web” is the default and I assume that to be the whole of the world because the second option for me is the UK. Presumably for those of you in other countries it will be your own country. The “Any time” option gives you the various time periods and custom time period by which you can limit your search. “Reading, UK” is my physical location and some results are personalised using that location. The location can be changed to another town or the country as a whole, as with the previous side bar menus. It is not clear what “All results” does but again clicking on it reveals the final set of search options including the all important Verbatim.

Google Search Options New Menu 5

 

As with previous side bar menus, the second level options change depending on which type of resource you are searching. For example, if you click on Search tools in Images there are links that take you to options that include size, colour and type.

 

Google Search Options New Menu 5

This change looks as though it is here to stay as most people in the UK are now seeing it and several of the country versions of Google I’ve looked at are also displaying it. All the old options are still there but it requires extra clicks to get to the same place and I sometimes forget what each link has underneath it. So those of you who, like me, run training sessions expect to spend the next few weeks updating your slides and training materials.

Statistics

New StatsWales to be launched

StatsWales is the key website to visit for statistics on Wales. A new version of the site, StatsWales ‘Beta’, has been launched with a full launch planned for Monday 3rd December.

New features include:

  • improved search capability
  • enhanced charting
  • direct URI access to data catalogue and reports
  • better sharing of reports including those personally tailored/configured
  • additional direct data access formats
  • more powerful personalisation
  • support for legacy links

The old platform will be available until December 31st

While data is being transferred to the new system access to both the new and the old services will be provided as follows:

https://statswales.wales.gov.uk – will link to the new system
http://statswales1.wales.gov.uk – link to the old StatsWales system will work until 31st December
http://statswales.wales.gov.uk – will point to the actual current system in use during this transition period

A video tutorial on the new system is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a08s26rDM1g

Uncategorized

Graphwords visual thesaurus

Graphwords (http://graphwords.com/) is another thesaurus visualisation tool that uses Wordnet (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/). Type in a word and it generates a map of associated nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

Graphwords

To view the meaning of a group of words move your cursor over the node and to explore a word and its related terms in more detail simply click on it.

Many thanks to Carol Bream for the alert.

Business Information, Top 10 Business Sites

Top tips for business information

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Here are the Top Tips for business information compiled by the participants of my latest business information workshop held on November 15th, 2012 in London. The set of slides that was the starting point for the workshop can be found on authorSTREAM at http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-1601945-business-information-key-web-resources/

  1. Zanran http://zanran.com/ A search tool for  identifying charts, graphs and tables of data within formatted documents such as PDFs, Excel spreadsheets and images. Enter your search terms and optionally limit your search by date and/or format type.  Zanran comes up with a list of  documents that match your criteria with thumbnails to the left of each entry. Hover over the thumbnail to see a preview of the page containing your data and further information on the document. Very useful if you are looking for industry statistics.

Zanran

  1. University library subjects guides. If you are looking for some good starting points on a subject seek out some university library subject guides. These list resources that are only available to their own students and staff but may also include links to relevant publicly accessible resources that have been assessed for quality.
  2. Socialmention http://socialmention.com/ Several social media search tools were covered in the workshop but this one received a special mention as a good general all round social media tool. It covers images, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, audi0 and bookmarks. If you are monitoring a topic you can set up email and RSS alerts.
  3. Companies House http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/ The official registry for UK companies. Other services such as Company Check (http://companycheck.co.uk/) and DUEDIL (http://www.duedil.com/), which repackage Companies House data, may provide more information free of charge but it is always worth double checking with Companies House to see if there is more up to date information and to get a full of list of the documents that are available on a company. The history and list of documents that can be ordered for a company is informative in itself. On the Companies House web site use the Find Company Information to locate the company in the register and then click on “Order information for this company”. You will then see a list of available documents. Titles such as “Struck off and dissolved” and “Application for administrative restoration” would suggest that perhaps you ought to investigate further before doing business with the company.
  4. LinkedIn groups A couple of the workshop participants regularly use LinkedIn groups for research questions. Look for groups set up by professional and official bodies relevant to your subject.
  5. Twitter If you are looking for a professional, research or trade association that may be able to help with your research you only need to find just one organisation on Twitter covering your topic. Then, to find others that might be useful, see who that organisation is following.
  6. Millionshort http://millionshort.com/. If you are fed up with seeing the same results from Google again and again give Million Short a try.  Million Short runs your search and then removes the most popular web sites from the results. Originally, as its name suggests, it removed the top 1 million but the default has changed to the top 10,000. The principle remains the same, though.  Exclude the more popular sites and you could uncover a real gem. The page that best answers your question might not be well optimised for search engines or might cover a topic that is so “niche” that it never makes it into the top results.
  7. Biznar http://www.biznar.com/ Biznar is a federated search engine that runs your search in real-time in about 70 resources. There is a list on the Advanced Search screen where you can deselect individual or groups of resources. The results are combined into a single list and organised on the left hand side of the screen into folders such as Topics, Authors, Publications, Publishers and Dates. These are computer generated but can help you narrow down your search. A bit erratic at times and sometimes comes up with odd results but people still thought it was worth including in the Top Tips list.
  8. DUEDIL http://www.duedil.com/. This service repackages Companies House data and provides some of it free of charge. The feature that won DUEDIL a place in the Top Tops is the “Group” visualisation that illustrates the connections between the company you are researching, its parent companies and subsidiaries. You have to create an account (free at the moment) to access all of the information.

DUEDIL

  1. SCoRe http://www.score.ac.uk A catalogue of current and historical printed company reports held in UK libraries. The catalogue does not provide links to digitised documents but is a very quick and easy way of identifying libraries that hold hard copy reports. The participating libraries include London Business School, the British Library, Manchester Business School, City Business Library, Guildhall Library, Strathclyde University and the University of Warwick. A full list is available at http://www.score.ac.uk/collections.asp.
information literacy

Visuwords online graphical dictionary

Visuwords (http://www.visuwords.com/) is an online graphical dictionary based on Princeton University’s WordNet (http://wordnet.princeton.edu/). Type in a word and it displays definitions, related terms, synonyms and antonyms as a diagram.

Visuwords

The colours show whether the words are nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs and the format of the lines joining them represent the type of link between words. A broken blue line, for example, represents “also see”. Move the cursor over a word to see a definition and double click on a node to expand it. This is a great tool if you are stuck for an alternative word and prefer a visual rather than textual approach to this type of search. It was suggested by one of my European contacts who was looking for a tool to help a colleague draft documents in English.

Google, privacy

Google search to get more personal

Google search is about to get even more personal – possibly. If you are signed in to your Google account and search Google.com, Google includes and highlights content from people in your networks. This has been available for some time but a couple of months ago Google launched a field trial that added your Gmail to the search mix, and a few days ago they added documents from Drive. You have to request to be added to the field trial and it only works on Google.com. If you are interested in trying it out you can signup at https://www.google.com/experimental/gmailfieldtrial.

Above your results Google.com tells you how many personal and other results have been found. A head and shoulders icon next to a result indicates that it is from someone in one of your networks. Click on the number of personal results to see just those. Across to the right there are a head and shoulders and world icons. If you want to hide the personal results click on the world icon. If you have searched on a person or an organisation their Google+ profile, if they have one, is shown to the right of the screen. Above this, any messages or documents in your Gmail and Drive that match your search are displayed.

Google Field Trial - Gmail and Drive

I have mixed feelings about this. At first I was very much against the integration of personal posts and data with general search. If I want to search Google+ I’ll do it within Google+, and similarly I go into Gmail if I want to search my email. However, I would not routinely do that for research projects and during this field trial I have sometimes found useful information in my Google+ circles, giving me a very different view of the topic/person/organisation I am investigating. The question then is can I pass this on to a client or include it in a report? The answer is not straightforward. If the Google+ posting has been made public and not restricted to a circle then yes. Otherwise I would have to obtain the person’s permission to use it or pass it on. With Gmail I would have to obtain permission from all the parties concerned and I would also need to check the ownership of any documents identified within my Drive.

I can clearly see and understand the difference between public and private search results as I am sure all information professionals and many researchers can, but I do wonder about other Google users. “It’s come up in a Google search so I’m free to use it as I want”. It could be argued that you shouldn’t put anything up on Google+ unless you don’t mind it going public, even if you have restricted it to a small circle of contacts but email should remain private and be kept out of general search results. I can see legal actions looming!

This is a limited field trial, though, so not everyone who uses Google.com is seeing the Gmail and Drive results yet. If you do take part in the trial and have any concerns about how it works and potential privacy issues, there are feedback links next to the Gmail and Drive results. Use them!

Google, Search Engines, Search Strategies

Oi, Google! NO!!

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I’ve been seeing what looks like a new annoying Google search “feature” for a few weeks. I have been trying to ignore it in the hope that it would go away but it hasn’t. The problem is that Google has started giving me long lists of YouTube videos for some of my queries, even though I am in web search. For example a search on comfrey compost tea came up with about a dozen videos before giving me web pages with text describing the benefits of comfrey compost, which was what I wanted. In addition, in the menus on the left hand side of the screen Google offered me options to refine my video search by duration. But, Dear Google, I did NOT want videos at all!

Google search for comfrey compost tea

It did not matter whether or not I was signed in to my Google account. The videos were still given priority. I wondered if this was just an issue with Chrome so I switched to Firefox. The list of videos disappeared and was replaced by just one entry for YouTube at the top.

Comfrey Compost Tea in Firefox and Incognito

This gave me a clue as to what might be going on. I use Chrome for most of my “personalised” search. I generally stay logged in to my account, have enabled web search history and do not clear out the search cookies. In contrast I use Firefox for “de-personalised” search. I stay logged out of Google and social networks, and cookies and history are cleared after each session. I usually watch permaculture and gardening videos in Chrome, which probably explains why YouTube was taking pride of place in many of my search results. To test the theory I paused and deleted my web search history, and cleared cookies and browsing data. I then signed out of Google, cleared cookies again and re-ran the search. The blasted videos were still there.

What if I ran the search in a Chrome incognito window? The results were identical to those when using Firefox. Back to a normal Chrome window and the videos returned. I then checked that my web history was off and deleted. It wasn’t and it steadfastly refused to go away. Then the penny dropped. All my Chrome data – bookmarks, history etc – are synced to my Google account so no matter how often I try and delete the stuff locally it will all come back down again from my account. I disconnected my Google account under Chrome’s settings and, “Hey presto”, no more videos. I reconnected and they were back. It appears that if you are using Chrome and have synced it with your Google account you will get personalised results, even if you are signed out of your account.

So, if you are a Chrome user you may think that you have switched off personalisation by logging out of your account but that may not be the case. If you are conducting serious research it is always worth running your searches in an Incognito window, using a different browser or a completely different search engine like DuckDuckGo (http://duckduckgo.com/).

Postscript: I forgot to mention that I also tried Verbatim, but to no avail. Verbatim makes sure that all your terms are in the pages/documents exactly as you have typed them in but that still gives Google plenty of leeway in presenting those results. Google still bombarded me videos although some were different from my original search.

Tales From The Terminal Room

September Tales from the Terminal Room now available

Yes, I know it’s a bit late – busy with  ‘stuff’ and, I confess, enjoying life*.

If you follow my blog you will have already seen the main articles but not the Twitter Notes which are bits and pieces I’ve picked up on Twitter. They are mostly comments and links to articles I’ve found interesting with a few slightly silly things. On the surface the Onion News Network Youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sThcwmx3rs&feature=youtu.be may seem ‘silly’ but actually highlights how much information we divulge on social networks.

The latest Tales from the Terminal Room is now available at http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/archives/2012/sep2012.shtml and features:

  • Search Strategies goes electronic
  • Million Short: unearthing stuff hidden in the dungeons of Google’s results
  • Rediscovering BananaSlug for “long tail” search
  • Top search tips from North Wales
  • Doing Business in the United Kingdom and France
  • Company information: Luxembourg and Belgium
  • Twitter Notes

* I’ve been indulging myself by attending workshops on wildlife gardening at the Five a Day Market Garden (http://www.fiveaday.org.uk/), moss walks courtesy of the Earley Environmental Group (http://www.earleyenvironmentalgroup.co.uk/) and various fungus forays.

Uncategorized

Search Strategies goes electronic

My publication “Search Strategies for the Internet” is changing and going electronic. There will be shorter articles covering specific search techniques and search engine features. In addition there will be screencasts and presentations. The new structure means that updates to the content will be easier and more frequent. Initially there will be no “book” but I may eventually combine some of the articles into a single publication.

As before, some information such as the fact sheets and Top Tips are available free of charge but the detailed information and screencasts will be available to subscribers only. See http://www.rba.co.uk/search/ for further details. Annual individual subscription rates are £48/year (£40 + £8 VAT). Multi-user and corporate rates are available on request. If you don’t want to commit to an annual subscription some of the articles will be available separately for purchase.

“How to make Google run the search you want” is already available in the subscribers’ area and covers Verbatim, daterange, using the tilde and intext. Several topics are in preparation and to help me get an idea of what people are interested in I have set up a quick poll. It would be great if you could rank the seven topics with ‘1’ being the one you would like to see most. If there is a search topic or feature that you would like to see covered and it is not in the list use the comment box at the bottom of this posting. The topic with the most votes will be made available in the free content area.

Many thanks.