Tricks for Searching the Web
From GSLISWiki
Well, we are librarians after all, should we not document our tricks for searching the web so that all can benefit from them?
The ALA shares this philosophy:
- ALA | Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher
"Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher Developed and maintained by Pat Ensor Tired of endless lists of Web search tools that give you no guidance as to which ones to use? Or that were last updated when Gophers were alive? I'm inviting you to look over my shoulder and use what I use every day for Web searching in an academic library. I keep up with this stuff so you don't have to!"
- from Eric Sizemore
Contents |
[edit] Pages Evaluating Search Engines
[edit] Noodle Tools Search Engine Specialties
- From their site:
Information Literacy: Search Strategies Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need
[edit] Search Engine Partnerships
- See the animated chart at:
[edit] Traditional Search Engines
[edit] Google
- Google is still, in my opinion, the best search engine around. It is the one I use by default. However, it is not perfect, and the other search engines I have listed below have some advantages over Google. Their entries are written by comparing them to Google--by holding Google to be the standard.
[edit] Ask Jeeves
- The advantage of Ask Jeeves over Google is that Ask Jeeves has a more diverse series of returns than Google does, and it has a different emphasis on what kinds of pages it deems relevant. Somehow, it seems to be more humanities based, while Google is more techie/engineering based.
- This means that for music searches, like if you are trying to find the lyrics for a particular song, it is by far the superior search engine.
- It also makes me wonder if perhaps the future of search engines is not to continuously improve the search techniques of any single engine, but rather, to follow the Google model, and have multiple specialized search engines, and you pick the one that is biased towards retrieving the type of results you are looking for.
[edit] Yahoo!
- In Febrary 2004, Yahoo stopped using Google and replaced it with 'Yahoo Internet Search', which not surprisingly looks a lot like Google. Yahoo's searches sometimes have more variety in their results as well, but I have not extensively tested Yahoo! vs. Google. Considered the #2 search engine, although Google has about 80% of the market so #2 isn't much different than #10.
[edit] MSN
- The new MSN search is, like Yahoo Internet Search, an obvious attempt to copy Google. The results, and even the ads are almost identical to Yahoo! Weird.
[edit] Alexa
- Amazon's foray into the internet search world.
[edit] Experimental Search Engines
[edit] Clusty
- My personal recent favorite to play around with. Clusty, the clustering index. I realize it sounds like a fake kids show. Eh, it is an interesting idea though.
- --JonGorman 16:47, 14 Jan 2005 (EST)
[edit] Vivisimo
- Similar to Clusty, but came before. A favorite of John Dunkelberger
[edit] Other Tricks for Searching the Net
- Expert Web Search Tips
Expert Web Search Tips - Internet Searching, Boolean Algrbra, Unique Identifiers, Phrases, Keywrods, AND, OR
"The basic elements of expert search techniques are built on the simple theory of boolean logic. A summary of boolean logic, description of eight key search techniques, and related information is described below:
- The Logic Of Boolean Algebra
- Search For Unique Identifiers
- Use AND To Combine Search Words "
etc., etc....
- from Eric Sizemore
- Copy and Pasting Tricks
If you want to have a multi-page article display on a single html page, look for a "printer friendly" link. Most of the time when you click on it, it will display the entire article on a single returned page. This is useful if you want to copy and paste an entire article in one fell swoop, or if you want to save a copy of the article to your computer by using the File --> Save As option in your browser window.
[edit] Related Links
- ALA | Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher
"Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher Developed and maintained by Pat EnsorTired of endless lists of Web search tools that give you no guidance as to which ones to use? Or that were last updated when Gophers were alive? I'm inviting you to look over my shoulder and use what I use every day for Web searching in an academic library. I keep up with this stuff so you don't have to!"
- from [[[Eric Sizemore]]
Categories: Research | Resources | Ideas | Fun
