Category Archives: Search Strategies

Search Engines, Search Strategies, Top 10 Search Tips, UKeiG

UKeiG Top Search Tips

UKeiG held yet another ‘Google and Beyond’ workshop on November 6th 2007, this time in London. As usual, the participants were asked to come up with a list of their Top Search Tips. Here it is!

  1. Graball http://www.graball.com/
    Search two different search engines side by side and compare results.
  2. Use ‘site search’ to search within a specific, individual site or to a particular type of site e.g. UK government sites. Especially useful for sites that have poor navigation or awful internal search engines. Use the site: command, for example site:gov.uk or use the Advanced Search screens of the search engines.
  3. Use file format search to limit your search to one or more file formats, for example PDF, PPT, XLS. A good way of focusing your search: many government and industry/market reports are published as PDFs, statistics in spreadsheet format, and PowerPoints are a good way of tracking down experts on a subject. Use the Advanced Search screens or the filetype: command, for example filetype:ppt
  4. Intelways http://www.intelways.com/. Type in your search once and then run it through individual search engines one by one. The search engines are grouped together by type, for example Image, News, Reference. A useful reminder of what else is out there other than Google and that perhaps you should be thinking of searching different types of information.
  5. Numeric Range Search. Available only in Google and searches for numbers within a specified range. The syntax is 1st number..2nd number. For example:TV advertising forecasts 2008..2015

    or

    toblerone 1..5 kg

  6. Alacrawiki Spotlights http://www.alacrawiki.com/. Extremely useful in providing reviews and commentary on industry specific web sites that have statistics, market research and news. Invaluable if you need to get up to speed on key resources in a sector or industry.
  7. Panoramio. http://www.panoramio.com/. Now owned by Google. A geolocation-oriented photo sharing service with uploaded photos presented as a mashup with Google Earth.
  8. Wayback Machine – http://www.archive.org/. For tracking down copies of pages or documents that have disappeared from the original web site. Type in the address of the web site or the full URL of the document, if you know it. Note: this is not guaranteed but worth a try for older documents that are unlikely to be in the search engine caches.
  9. Google Book Search . Useful for searching within books that Google has been allowed to scan, and in particular older text books.
  10. Use anything but Google! For example – in alphabetical order – Ask.com, Exalead.com, Live.com, Yahoo.com. For a day, try out other search tools to see if you can survive without Google. You may go back to Google as your first port of call but at least you will have discovered the strengths and key features of the alternatives.
  11. For current news try Google News and its alert service (it’s free!). And don’t forget blogs, for example Google Blogsearch, Ask- Blogs, Blogpulse, Technorati.
  12. Blogpulse trends. Click on the graph icon on the results page to see how often your search terms have been mentioned in blog postings over time. Used by many of us who monitor competitor or industry intelligence to see what are hot topics and when. Many of the ‘peaks’ will tie in with press announcements: it is those that don’t that are really interesting. Click on the peaks in the graph to see the postings.
    Search Strategies

    Pipl – People Search (beta)

    6 Comments

    Pipl claims to be the most comprehensive people search on the web. Simply type in the first and last names of the person you are looking for, geographic location if known, and Pipl goes off and searches “hidden web” resources as well as the usual Google search. I tried it on myself and it did a pretty good job. The Quick Facts presented at the top of the page were correct, and it pulled in information from blog searches, Google Groups, Linkedin, Flicker and Google Scholar. Pipl also searches electoral rolls, directories, collections of peer reviewed literature such as Scirus and Google Scholar, Hoovers and Zoominfo. A search on my husband, Chris Rhodes, was less successful and I failed to find him amongst the thousands of other Chris Rhodes out there. Google, however, came up with him in the number 1 and 2 positions in a standard web search.

    As with all of these types of search engine you still have to differentiate between different people with the same name: I do not work for the Honolulu Advertiser and neither am I the marketing director at Laura’s Lean Beef Company! And the quality of the results is variable. Nevertheless, Pipl is worth adding to your bookmarks for people search.

    Pipl home page

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    Live.com, Search Engines, Search Strategies, Yahoo

    Live.com takes link commands offline

    3 Comments

    Those of you who use the link commands in Live.com will have noticed that over the past week link: and linkdomain: have been returning blank results pages. This is not a temporary glitch but has been done on purpose by Live. According to their blog:

    ” We have been seeing broad use of these features by legitimate users but unfortunately also what appears to be mass automated usage for data mining. So for now, we have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators. We are doing our best to get this back online as soon as possible in a manner that allows folks that use this functionality for real queries.”

    The linkfromdomain: command, which lists all the pages that a web site links to, is still working.

    While Live makes up its mind about what to do with the commands try link and linkdomain in Yahoo. The results are not always as comprehensive as Live.com’s but will probably suffice in most situations. The syntax for the Yahoo’s link command is slightly different. To find pages that link to a specific page on a site it is:

    link:http://www.yoursite.com/pagename.html

    Note that you must include the ‘http://’

    To find pages that link to any page on a site the syntax is similar to Live’s:

    linkdomain:yoursite.com

    Google also has a link command but it displays a small fraction of the results.

    Publications, Search Engines, Search Strategies

    Search Strategies for the Internet: Updates

    The following chapters of Search Strategies for the Internet have been updated and are available online:

    http://www.rba.co.uk/search/section1.shtml
    Chapter 3: Essential Search Techniques (available to subscribers only) – now includes Seekport.co.uk under the search tools that support wildcards and truncation, Live Search link and linkdomain commands, and how to uncluster results.

    http://www.rba.co.uk/search/section2.shtml
    Chapter 12 Yahoo Search (available to subscribers only) – updated to include the region and originurlextension commands.

    Yahoo Factsheet – updated to include originurlextension and region commands.

    http://www.rba.co.uk/search/section3.shtml
    Chapter 20 Country Specific Information (available to subscribers only) – updated to include Yahoo region command and Seekport.co.uk

    Search Strategies

    Advanced Internet Search Strategies – Manchester Business School

    If you want to get in some serious practice on the latest Internet search techniques before Christmas there are still some places available on the workshop that I am running at Manchester Business School on December 5th. The event is held in the Eddie Davies Library at Manchester Business School, Booth Street West.

    Although it is being held at the business school, the workshop covers sites and techniques relevant to all subject areas and types of research. There is ample time for practical sessions so you can try out some of the tips and tricks yourself. Also, the number of participants is kept small enough for me to discuss with each person the search tools that are relevant to their specific research area.

    Details of the workshop and a booking form are on the
    MBS web site.

    Please contact me if you have a question about the content of the workshop, but for all queries regarding bookings please contact the Business Information Service at MBS on tel: 0161 275 6502/3, Fax: 0161 275 6505 or Email: bis@mbs.ac.uk

    Presentations, Search Strategies

    Searching without Google: the hottest and best of the new search engines

    Presenter: Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services
    Date: November 8th 2006, half day seminar starting at 1.30 pm
    Venue: Manchester Central Library, St Peter’s Square, Manchester M2 5PD
    Cost: Aslib members GBP 50; non-members GBP 60

    There is still time to book a place on this half day seminar on what is new and what is hot in the search engine world. Find out what is wrong with Google and why other search tools are often better and more reliable. This session will take you through the latest alternative web search engines; blogs and RSS search tools; image, video and audio tools; and specialist tools including evaluated listings.

    Further information and a booking form can be found at http://www.aslib.co.uk/members/northern/news.htm or contact Rona Stedman, rona.stedman@hse.gsi.gov.uk, tel 0151 951 3524

    ili2006, Search Strategies

    Internet Librarian Inernational starts today

    Internet Librarian International starts today in London at the Copthorne Tara hotel, but many of us were here yesterday for the preconference workshops. I attended Greg Notess’ Advanced Search Techniques seminar and, as usual with Greg’s sessions, I came away with lots of useful tips. Two that have particularly stuck in my mind are:

    Windows Live images search – note the scroll bar on the right hand side of the browser. Live lets you view a lot more than the usual 10 or 20 displayed in the other search engines.

    Undocumented Yahoo commands – use the region command to restrict your search by continent or region, for example region:europe or region:southamerica.

    Search Strategies, Top 10 Search Tips

    Top 10 Search Tips

    Delegates on the recent Advanced Internet Search Strategies workshop held at Manchester Business School came from the commercial sector, charities and the NHS. It was a lively day and the group came up with a very interesting list of Top 10 Tips:

    1. It isn’t you!
    You run your search a second time in Google and you get a completely different set of results despite having run the same search a mere 20 minutes before. Or you run a site search in Google but the results come from here, there and everywhere. Or your results bear no resemblance whatsoever to your search strategy. Don’t worry – it isn’t you. Google does play up at times and results are rarely consistent or reproducible from one moment to the next. If you are having serious difficulties getting any sense out of Google, don’t struggle. Try another search engine (Yahoo, AlltheWeb Livesearch, Ask, Exalead, Windows Live).

    2. Google.
    OK – we slagged off Google in Tip 1 but it can still deliver the goods a lot of the time and is the first port of call for most of us. Make sure, though, that you are using the advanced search features to the full and that you are using the right part of Google for example News for current headlines, Images, Blogsearch etc.

    3. AlltheWeb Livesearch – http://livesearch.alltheweb.com/
    Start typing in your search and AlltheWeb Livesearch immediately displays results and alternative search strategies that change as you type. The changing results help you spot when you are starting to go wrong with your search and the suggested alternative searches can be useful if you are unsure of how to tackle a subject.

    4. Google Maps/Local – http://maps.google.co.uk/.
    Great maps combining ordinary street maps with satellite images. (The business search option is not always reliable, though, and Google does not seem to want to tell you where railway stations are).

    5. Use the Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org/) to see what was being said on a web site in the past or to track down “lost” documents and pages.

    6. Remember that you are searching an out of date index of the web when you are using Google et al. Google is the least up to date: Yahoo and MSN/Windows Live seem to be the most frequently updated.

    7. Explore Blogs as potential sources of information opinions on industry events, products etc and RSS feeds as a means of delivering search alerts and current news headlines. You will need a feed reader for RSS feeds: try Newsgator.com (web based reader) or Omea (http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/reader/) if you are looking for a PC based reader.

    8. Trovando – http://www.trovando.it/
    Enables you enter your search strategy once and run it in different types of search tools one by one for example web, images, news, blogs, audio, video.

    9. Repeat the most important terms or terms in your search one or more times. This will often change the order in which your results are sorted and give you different results.

    10. If your search involves numbers, distances, weights, prices or measurements of any sort use the numeric range search in Google. For example:

    toblerone 1..5 kg

    to find online shops selling large(!) bars of toblerone

    or

    TV advertising spend forecasts 2005..2012

    to look for forecasts mentioning years from 2005 to 2012.

    Publications, Search Strategies

    Search Strategies 6th edition available

    The sixth edition of Search Strategies for the Internet is now available. Further details are available on the RBA web site and, as with previous editions, updates can also be downloaded from the web site. Although the price of the publication itself remains the same – GBP 35 for the ring binder version and GBP 22 if you only want to purchase the pre-punched loose leaf pages – we are now having to charge for postage and packaging. In the past we have been able to absorb these costs but rates have increased considerably over the last two years and a new pricing structure is about to be introduced by Royal Mail.

    With this edition we are offering an additional purchase option. You can immediately purchase and download a PDF version of the publication via Lulu.com, price USD 27.50.

    The structure of the publication remains essentially the same with section I outlining search tool essentials and key search techniques, section II details the major tools currently available, and search strategies are covered in section III. The summaries and comparison table, which are freely available, are in section IV.

    I had a quick look at the contents pages of previous editions and when it comes to the major search engines the fifth edition covered Google, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Gigablast, Teoma and HotBot. This time we have AlltheWeb Livesearch, Ask, Exalead, Gigablast, MSN Search and Yahoo Search. The first edition (published in early 1998) included Yahoo (as a directory), AltaVista, HotBot, Excite, Infoseek, Northern Light, Lycos, Euroferret and DejaNews. Google, officially launched on 7 September 1998, was just a glint in Larry and Sergey’s eye!

    Search Strategies

    GoshMe

    GoshMe brings together hundreds of specialist web sites and databases. The home page has a number of major headings such as science, environment and society, audio, health, law, reference, sports. Select the most appropriate subject or subjects and type in your search. GoshMe looks at the results from different search engines – it claims to cover approximately 1,000 – and then displays what it thinks are the best tools in which to run the search. You can then choose the tools you want to use.