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 makes ads more obvious

March 1, 2014 Karen Blakeman

This is a feature which I have been seeing on and off for a few months so I’m not sure if it is one of their experiments or if it is being rolled out gradually. It’s very simple: advertisements that appear at the top of your results lists and in the panel to the right are marked with a little yellow box with ‘Ad’ written inside.

Over the years it has become harder to identify ads at the top of results as the pale pastel backgrounds to them became more subtle. It has been suggested that the more obvious marker is a consequence of discussions between Google and various regulatory authorities.

Business Information

Business information key resources

February 14, 2014 Karen Blakeman

On one of my recent workshops I was asked if I used Google as my default search tool, especially when conducting business research. The short answer is “It depends”. The long answer is that it depends on the topic and type of information I am looking for. Yes, I do use Google a lot but if I need to make sure that I have covered as many sources as possible I also use Google alternatives such as Bing, Millionshort, Blekko etc. On the other hand and depending on the type of information I require I may ignore Google and its ilk altogether and go straight to one or more of the specialist websites and databases.

Here are just a few of the free and pay-per-view resources that I use.

Information on industry sectors

My favourite collection of guides on industry sectors is The British Library Business Information and IP Centre’s industry guides. These highlight relevant industry directories, databases, publications and web sites and are excellent starting points if you are new to a sector

Statistics

There are at least a dozen statistics sites that I use on a regular basis but if I’m unsure of where to look or want to make sure I haven’t missed anything I use OFFSTATS – Official Statistics on the Web at http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz. A great starting point for official statistical sources by country, region subject or a combination of categories. All of the content in the database is in the public domain and available through the Internet and has been quality assessed by staff at The University of Auckland Library.

Official company information

If I want to confirm the existence of a company or obtain filings and accounts I usually go direct to the relevant official company registry. I have a list of the registries that can be searched online at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm. As many of my enquiries are for UK companies I am a frequent visitor to Companies House at http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/. Some information is free but filings and accounts are priced. There are several companies that repackage Companies House data and sometimes make extra data or analysis free of charge for example Company Check at http://www.companycheck.co.uk/, which enables you to search by company or director’s name. Risk reports, information on CCJs, and some official filings are priced if you do not have a subscription to the full service.

Share price information

For free share price information I use Yahoo Finance (http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/) and Google Finance (https://www.google.co.uk/finance). Both of these services provide charts and news on shares on the major stock markets. Google’s graphs are ‘annotated’ with labels that link to news articles listed to the right of the graph, so you can see whether or not a particular event or announcement has affected a share price. Both offer free, daily historical share prices in figures. As well viewing historical graphs for share prices you can download the data as a spreadsheet.

News alerts

For news alerts I use a mixture of bookmarked searches, Google email and RSS alerts, and RSS feeds from a wide range of blogs and news sites. I find that Google alerts are erratic and unreliable but they do sometimes pick up something unique so I still include them in the mix. RSS feeds are my main source of current awareness and when a news feed is rather broad in coverage I use my RSS reader’s search function to identify the articles that are of interest to me. I use a desktop reader call RSSOwl (http://www.rssowl.org/) but Inoreader (http://inoreader.com/) is a web based service that offers similar features and options.

Who is behind a site?

If I am to use any information from the web for business purposes I need to know who is behind the website. DomainTools http://www.domaintools.com/ is one of many services that will tell who owns a domain name, unless they are hiding behind an agent or privacy protection service. There is also a Whois+ extension for Chrome (my default browser) that can be used to run a quick and easy check on the domain name of a displayed page.

Workshop

If you are interested in finding out more about business information resources I am running a workshop for TFPL in London on ~~March 6th~~ , June 6th 2014. Details are on the TFPL website.

Update: please note change of date for the next business information workshop. It is now being held on June 6th, 2014.

Google, Search Strategies

Google shows missing search terms

January 22, 2014 Karen Blakeman 8 Comments

Several weeks ago I noticed that Google was displaying the terms it had dropped from your search as ‘Missing’. Google started routinely ignoring selected search terms towards the end of 2011 (see http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/08/dear-google-stop-messing-with-my-search/). Google’s response to the outcry from searchers was to introduce the Verbatim search option. However, there was no way of checking whether all of your terms appeared in a result other than viewing the whole page. Irritating, to say the least, if you found that the top 10 results did not include all of your keywords.

Fast forward to December 2013, and some people started seeing results lists that showed missing keywords as strikethroughs. I saw them for a few days and then, just as I was preparing a blog posting on the feature, they disappeared! I assumed that they were one of Google’s live experiments never to be seen again but it seems they are back. Two people contacted me today to say that they are seeing strikethroughs on missing terms. I ran my test searches again and, yes, I’m seeing them as well.

I ran the original search that prompted my November 2011 article (parrots heron island Caversham UK) and included -site:rba.co.uk in the strategy to exclude my original blog postings. Sure enough, the first two results were missing parrots and had “Missing ~~parrots”~~ underneath their entry in the list.

Remember, though, that Google automatically looks for variations on your search terms. Your original keyword may not be present in the results but a synonym may be, for example birds instead of parrots. I did find one entry in the top 10 results that seemed out of place. It was an article in the local newspaper. There was no ‘Missing….’ underneath the result but I could not find synonyms of parrots anywhere in the story. The closest was the surname of a person mentioned in the article – Parry – and I can only assume that this was Google truncating my ‘parrots’ keyword and looking for variations. But Parry was not highlighted in the entry in the results list as synonyms are. I shall look at the article in more detail to check that I have not missed a lurking parakeet or cockatoo!

I need to carry out more test searches to see how reliable this new feature is but, nevertheless, it is a welcome and useful addition to Google. If your top 10 results are showing strikethroughs then you know you have to either prefix the missing term with ‘intext:’ or use Verbatim for the whole search.

Search Strategies, Top 10 Search Tips, workshops

Top search tips from Exeter and Bristol

November 28, 2013 Karen Blakeman

A couple of weeks ago I was in Exeter and Bristol leading workshops for NHS South West on “Google & Beyond”. We covered advanced Google commands, Google Scholar and alternatives to Google. Below are the combined top tips from the two sessions. I may have missed a couple from the list as I could not read my writing, so if you attended one of the workshops let me know if I’ve omitted your suggested tip.

Verbatim Yet again, this has topped the list of useful Google search options. Google automatically looks for variations on your search terms and sometimes drops terms from your search without telling or asking you. To make Google run your search exactly as you have typed it in, first run your search. Then click on ‘Search tools’ in the menu above your results, in the second line of options that appears click on ‘All results’ and from the drop down menu select Verbatim.
Be aware of personalisation. Even if you are not signed in to a Google account Google personalises your results according to your search and browsing behaviour. Personalisation is not necessarily a bad thing but if your want to burst out of the filter bubble, as it is often called, use a private browser window or incognito (Chrome). Google will then ignore tracking and search cookies on your machine and will not personalise your results. To call up a private browser or incognito window use the following keys:

Chrome – Ctrl+Shift+N
FireFox – Ctrl+Shift+P
Internet Explorer – Ctrl+Shift+P

site: Use the site: command to focus your search on particular types of site, for example site:nhs.uk, or to search inside a large, rambling site. You can also use -site: to exclude sites from your search.
intext: Google’s automatic synonym search can be helpful when looking for alternative terms, but if you want a term to be included in your search exactly as you have typed it then prefix the word with intext:.
filetype: Use the filetype: command to limit your research to PowerPoint for presentations, spreadsheets for data and statistics or PDF for research papers and industry/government reports. Note that in Google filetype:ppt and filetype:xls will not pick up the newer .pptx and xlsx formats so you will need to include those in your strategy, for example filetype:ppt OR filetype:pptx, or run separate searches for each one. In Bing.com, though, filetype:pptx will pick up both .ppt and .pptx files.
Advanced search commands and search options Learn how to use the search commands (for example intext:, filetype: and site:). Many of these can be used on the advanced search screen that can usually be found under the cog wheel in the upper right hand area of the screen, but that link sometimes disappears so learning the commands is a better bet. A list of the more useful Google commands is at http://www.rba.co.uk/search/SelectedGoogleCommands.shtml.
Combine advanced search commands. Practise combining the advanced search commands for a more precise, focused set of results.
Google Reading level. This changes the type of results that you see. Run your search and from the menu above the results select ‘Search tools’, ‘All results’ and from the drop menu ‘Reading level’. Options for switching between basic, intermediate and advanced reading levels should then appear just above the results. Click on the Advanced option to see results biased towards research. Google does not give much away as to how it calculates the reading level and it has nothing to do with the reading age that publishers assign to publications. It seems to involve an analysis of sentence structure, the length of sentences, the length of the document and whether scientific or industry specific terminology appears in the page.
Numeric range. This command is unique to Google. Use it for anything to do with numbers – years, temperatures, weights, distances, prices etc. Simply type in your two numbers separated by two full stops as part of your search. This is a good way of limiting your search, for example, to forecasts over the few years.
Limiting your search by date. To limit your search by date, for example the last month or year, first run your search. Then click on ‘Search tools’ in the menu above the results and from the second row of options that appears click on ‘Any time’. Select your time period or a custom range from the drop down menu.
Use the minus sign to exclude documents containing a word. If you do not want documents containing a specific word prefix that word term with a minus sign. The minus sign can also be used with commands such as site: and filetype: to remove an individual site or type of document from your results.
Million Short 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 you can choose to remove the most popular web sites from the results. Originally, as its name suggests, it automatically removed the top 1 million but now you can choose to remove the most popular 100, 1000, 10k, 100k or million sites. 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 in Google or Bing.
Creative commons searches for images. Rather than search for images and go through them individually to find one that you can legally use in your document or presentation, use advanced search options or tools that allow you to select the appropriate license from the start. In Google, use the usage rights menu on the image advanced search screen to search for images with the license you need. The US version of Bing images includes a license option in the menu at the top of your results.

Double check the license of the photo on the website or blog hosting it. The license you need may be associated with a different image and yours could, for example, be ‘all rights reserved’.Flickr has a page where you can search for images with a specific Creative Commons license at http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons.

Compare in Google. This is not a Google command but if you type in a search such as compare carrots with cabbage Google will create a table comparing the properties of the two items. Google has been known to get some of the data wrong, though, so it’s worth double checking the figures before you use them.
Web archives. Want to see what was on a website a few years ago or trying to track down a document that seems to have vanished from the web? Try the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org/. Enter the URL of the website or document and you should then see a calendar of the snapshots that the archive has of the site or document. Choose a date from the calendar to view the page. The archive does not have everything but it is worth a try. See also the UK National Archives of old government websites and pages at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/webarchive/ and the UK Web Archive at http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/.
Statistics sites. Although you can often find statistics via Google, you may find dedicated official statistics sites quicker and more reliable. Some of the sites we covered during the workshops were:

NHS Statistics Links http://www.nhs.uk/Pages/LinkListing.aspx?CategoryId=Statistics
UK National Statistics Publication Hub http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
Office for National Statistics http://www.ons.gov.uk/
Welsh Government Statistics http://wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/
Welsh Assembly Government StatsWales http://statswales.wales.gov.uk/
UK Open data http://data.gov.uk/
Eurostat http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/
European Union Open Data Portal http://open-dat.europa.eu/en/
Zanran http://www.zanran.com/

Google, Top 10 Search Tips

Google workshop – top tips

November 4, 2013 Karen Blakeman

Last week’s workshop on Google had a wonderful mix of participants from the academic, government, public, NHS and legal sectors. And true to form, Google decided to change a few things on the day. The link to the Google News advanced search completely disappeared (it wasn’t that good anyway!) but now seems to have reappeared. The search options that appear at the top of the results pages had changed compared with screen shots that I had taken 2 days previously; they options now seem to change according to the type of query so we suspect that this is an example of Hummingbird (Google’s new algorithm). The Google custom search engine interface has changed yet again and presented challenges to even those of us who are regular users. And then there was the new Google log-out/log-in interface which had us all flummoxed until the end of the day. (That merits a separate blog rant).

In the time honoured tradition, at the end of the day the group was asked to come up with their top 10 tips for searching Google. Here is what they came up with.

Verbatim Several people shouted out this one as the number 1 tip for searching Google. Google automatically looks for variations on your search terms and sometimes drops terms from your search without telling or asking you. To make Google run your search exactly as you have typed it in, first run your search. Then click on ‘Search tools’ in the menu above your results, in the second line of options that appears click on ‘All results’ and from the drop down menu select Verbatim.
site: command Use the site: command to focus your search on particular types of site, for example site:ac.uk, or to search inside a large rambling site. You can also use -site: to exclude sites from your search.
Advanced search commands and search options Learn how to use the search commands (for example intext:, filetype: and site:), Many of these can be used on the advanced search screen that can usually be found under the cog wheel in the upper right hand area of the screen, but that link sometimes disappears so learning the commands is a better bet. A list of the more useful Google commands is at http://www.rba.co.uk/search/SelectedGoogleCommands.shtml
intext: Google’s automatic synonym search can be helpful in looking for alternative terms but if you want a term to be included in your search exactly as you have typed it in then prefix the word with intext:.
Country versions of Google. The country versions of Google give priority to the country’s local content, although it might be in the local language. This is a useful strategy when searching for industries, companies and people that are active in a particular country. Use Google followed by the standard ISO two letter country code, for example http://www.google.de/ for Google Germany, http://www.google.no/ for Google Norway.
Google.com Apart from presenting your search results in a different order Google.com is where Google launches new features and search options first. As well as seeing pages that may not be highly ranked in Google.co.uk you will get an idea of how Google search may look in the UK version in the future. It also has some unique search options such as recipes!
Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/ Google Scholar collects all the versions of an article under an ‘All versions” link.

Click on the link to see the full list, which might include free or open access copies of the paper.
Search by image Click on the camera icon in the image search bar to upload a photo or link to an image on the web. Google will then try and find similar images. There were comments from some of the workshop participants that this does not seem to always work as well as it used to, which reflects my own recent experience of the option. It is still worth a go, though, if you want to find different versions of an image.
Hummingbird Keep an eye out for new layouts and ways of searching that are now appearing since Hummingbird was launched. For example, you can now compare the properties of two similar items: compare cabbage with spinach will show a table comparing the nutritional value of the two vegetables.
Google Custom Search Engines (CSE) Several of the participants had a go at setting up their own CSE. Ideal for bringing together websites that you search individually on a regular basis.

Edited highlights of the presentations can be found on authorSTREAM at http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-1975041-make-google-behave-techniques-better-search-results/ and http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-1975022-google-scholar-citation-indexes/

Bing, Google, Search Engines

Compare Google and Bing results with Bingiton

October 14, 2013 Karen Blakeman 1 Comment

Just over a year ago Bing launched a website called Bingiton (http://www.bingiton.com/), which enabled you to compare search results from Google and Bing side by side and then decide which set was best. You had to run five searches and then Bingiton told you which search engine you had chosen for each. After a couple of weeks the site was restricted to US users but it has now been relaunched in the UK.

The principle remains the same: you type in five searches, Bingiton displays the two sets of results side by side, and you decide which you prefer or go for the draw option (“can’t decide”).

I ran several batches of searches through Bingiton and Google won 4 of the rounds. The fifth, which consisted of searches for cake and jam recipes, was a draw with me being unable to decide. Two other rounds had to be declared null and void because “Scholarly articles” links (Google Scholar) appeared at the top of one set of results indicating that they were from Google. Another included what was obviously a Google map!

For me Bing seemed to be better at recipes and shopping enquiries than research oriented queries. Google consistently came out on top for local information and current news. Phil Bradley has also blogged about Bingiton (http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2013/10/bings-bing-it-on-challenge-returns-to-the-uk.html) and invited people to comment on their own results. It is an interesting mix and Google does not always win or win outright. Take the Bingiton challenge yourself at http://www.bingiton.com/.

Google

Google to start using your photo and reviews to endorse ads

October 13, 2013 Karen Blakeman

If you have a Google+ account you should have received an email from Google with the innocuous subject line “An Update for Google+ Page Owners and Managers”. Don’t ignore it because it contains important information about changes to Google’s terms and conditions that take effect on November 11th, 2013. From that date Google may start using your profile name and photo to endorse ads. Several people have already posted extensively about this so I will not go into much detail here. Tony Hirst has already written an excellent article on this at http://blog.ouseful.info/2013/10/12/googles-new-terms-mean-you-could-soon-been-acting-as-a-product-endorser/, which also addresses other privacy issues and account settings that you may wish to review and change.

If you do not want your photo and name used in advertisements you have to opt out because Google seems to have automatically added everyone to the scheme. Sign in to your Google+ account and go to the settings page. You should see a new option for “Shared endorsements” that is switched on. Click on the Edit link to change it to “Off”. Of course, Google tries to discourage you from doing this by saying that “your friends will be less likely to benefit from your recommendations”.

Click continue to carry on and switch endorsements off.

Tales From The Terminal Room

September Tales from the Terminal Room now available

October 12, 2013 Karen Blakeman

The September issue of Tales from the Terminal Room is now available at http://www.rba.co.uk/tfttr/archives/2013/sep2013.html

This month’s issue includes:

Recent presentations
Search tools – Google announces Hummingbird…..hmmmm
Top tips from the latest business information workshop
Interactive maps of UK renewable energy generation
Twitter notes
Forthcoming workshops and meetings How to Make Google behave: techniques for better results, Wednesday, 30th October 2013
- Free resources and search techniques for EU and UK legislation, Wednesday, 13th November 2013, London
- Anything but Google, Tuesday, 19th November 2013, London

The newsletter is a compilation of recent articles from this blog plus some extra goodies such as Twitter Notes.

energy, Statistics

Interactive maps of UK renewable energy generation

October 7, 2013 Karen Blakeman

I recently mentioned Gridwatch (How the UK’s electricity is generated http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2013/08/21/how-the-uks-electricity-is-generated/) as a way of tracking how much energy is passing through the National Grid and the technology used to generate that electricity. Although Gridwatch is a great way of observing the total amount of electricity that is generated by each technology – gas, coal, wind etc – it does not go into any detail with respect to individual installations. The Digest of UK energy statistics (DUKES) produced by the UK Department of Energy & Climate Change (http://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-energy-climate-change/series/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes) includes a spreadsheet listing all of the operational power stations, fuel that they use, installed capacity, location, and the year that generation began. The direct link to the spreadsheet is http://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/226895/dukes5_11.xls. This is historical data and the current list refers to plants in operation at the end of May 2013.

UK Energy Watch has a map (http://www.ukenergywatch.org/Electricity/PowerStations) showing the location of UK power stations of 400 MW or larger, so it is by no means comprehensive. It does allow you, though, to click on a plant and display current generation except for CCGT stations (Combined Cycle Gas Turbine).

There are more options available when it comes to what are called renewables (for example wind, solar, biomass, hydro). The DECC’s RESTATS interactive map at http://restats.decc.gov.uk/app/pub/map/map/ enables you to search by technology, region, county, planning authority and application status. It also has a separate map for wind farm capacities.

The site information includes installed capacity, details of the planning application but not how much energy is actually being produced. RESTATS says that “Information is held on the performance of operational projects but owing to the need to maintain the commercially sensitive nature of these data, specific site details and performance figures are not disclosed“.

The UK Data explorer has produced a renewables map at http://ukdataexplorer.com/renewables/ that uses the RESTATS data and shows operational renewable electricity sites over 0.01 MW. The different colours represent the type of plant and the area of the circles indicate installed capacity (maximum power output).

To see details of a specific installation you should be able to hover over a point on the map. This did not work for me with some of the smaller plants and when I tried to zoom in on an area I often lost the background map.

The Interactive Map of Renewable and Alternative Energy Projects in the UK at http://www.renewables-map.co.uk is another interactive map and can be filtered by technology type and planning status.

According to the website the information is gathered from “a wide range of web resources, in all cases these will be referenced, usually by a link to that information. Locations are either taken from existing data, usually from planning applications, or by painstakingly identifying the location on the ground using online maps.” I am not sure how up to date the map is and I noticed that the smaller hydro installations along the Thames are missing. Another problem that I have experienced with this site is that when I click on “More details” for an installation I get far too many “internal sever errors”. However, when the information does appear it includes useful comments on the technology, links to relevant websites and the latest news.

The final one in my list is from the energy generating company RWE Innogy (http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/194914/rwe-innogy/sites/production-data-live/). Its interactive map provides information on most of its European plants and includes wind farms, hydro power plants and biomass CHP (Combined Heat and Power). The production data is updated every minute. To see information on an installation, click on its icon on the map. The information includes live production, location, type of installation and when production started.

These are by no means the only websites offering interactive maps and information on UK energy production, and none of them give the full picture. They are good starting points, though, if you are interested in researching individual technologies or individual power stations.

Google, Search Strategies

Google announces Hummingbird…hmmm

October 5, 2013 Karen Blakeman

Google announced a major new search algorithm to celebrate its 15^thanniversary called Hummingbird, because it is “precise and fast”. Interestingly, the change was implemented about a month before the announcement was made and most of us did not notice any difference! That is probably because Google is continually making minor changes to the way it presents results, and then there are the live experiments that we are all subjected to (Just Testing: Google Users May See Up To A Dozen Experiments http://searchengineland.com/just-testing-google-searchers-may-see-up-to-a-dozen-experiments-141570). So, even if we do suspect that our results have changed, it’s difficult to know whether it’s the usual combination of personalisation and experiments or the new algorithm.

Phil Bradley has written a neat summary of what Hummingbird is (http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2013/09/what-is-google-hummingbird.html) and Danny Sullivan has compiled an FAQ at http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816. There is also a short video on the BBC website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24292897 in which Amit Singhal, VP, Google Search talks about the launch and the future direction of Google search.

I have not noticed any significant differences in either desktop or mobile search but that is probably a good thing. We tend to spot changes only when Google completely messes up. I suspect that we’ll see little difference when using advanced commands such as filetype or site; Hummingbird seems to be geared more towards handling natural language queries. It is far too early to say how this is going to affect in depth research, but if you suddenly find strange things happening to your search it could be Hummingbird and not you.

If you are keen to find out more about how Google works and how to get better results I am presenting a workshop later this month in London that has been organised by UKeiG. Further details are on the UKeiG website. Alternatively, if you have had enough of Google and want to explore alternatives there is the Anything but Google workshop, again organised by UKeiG.

Karen Blakeman's Blog