Search Engines : Search Engines CEdO515 - Week 2
Search more than one : Search more than one A recent report from Dogpile (a great metasearch engine) found that the overlap in search engine results is decreasing...and it wasn't that high to begin with. Search Engine Land has a great write-up of the report. Here are some highlights:
Results : Results In 2007, "only 0.6 percent first page search results were the same" across the four top search engines.
Maybe you're thinking--that's not fair! you can't expect a lot of overlap between four different engines! How about two? Well, it's better, but still only 8.9% overlap in the first page's results between two engines.
Overall, this works out to 88.3% of total results being unique to one engine.
What else is there? : What else is there? Most people think that Google is the only search engine – or only go there. So what are some others?
Exalead : Exalead
Yahoo Search : Yahoo Search
Ask : Ask
Gigablast : Gigablast
Live Search : Live Search
Improving your searches : Improving your searches You can get better results from an Internet search engine if you know how to use wildcards and "Boolean operators." Wildcards allow you to search simultaneously for several words with the same stem. For example, entering the single term "educat*" will allow you to conduct a search for "educator", "educators", "education" and "educational" all at the same time.
Boolean : Boolean Boolean operators were named after George Boole (1815-1864) who combined the study of logic with that of algebra. Using the boolean operator "and", it is possible to narrow a search so that you get quite a limited set of results. Another common operator is "not" which acts to limit a search as well. The boolean operator "or" has the opposite effect of expanding a search. Using boolean terms, you can have the search engine look for more than one word at a time. Here are three examples of such search terms.
endangered and species
insecticides not ddt
university or college
Meta Search Engine : Meta Search Engine A meta search engine is a search tool that doesn't create its own database of information, but instead searches those of other engines. "Metacrawler", for instance, searches the databases of each of the following engines: Lycos, WebCrawler, Excite, AltaVista, and Yahoo. Using multiple databases will mean that the search results are more comprehensive, but slower to obtain.
Effective search strategies : Effective search strategies Decide whether a search engine or a subject directory will be the best vehicle. The more specific the information you need, the more likely you will want to use a search engine.
When using a search engine, be as specific as possible. The amount of information now on the Internet can be overwhelming. To narrow down your search results to manageable numbers, use a search engine that allows the use of boolean operators and enter as many keywords as possible.
Effective search strategies : Effective search strategies Get used to more than one search engines. You will develop a preference for a certain engine and it may work well for you but don't forget the other search engines and, from time to time, try another engine or a meta engine to ensure that you have achieved good coverage of the Internet.
Read the "tips" files provided by most engines. You'll be surprised to find out little things that make life easier. For instance, AltaVista allows you to use the "+" symbol instead of writing out the word "AND" when you use boolean operators.