For the past year, I haven't been as successfully searching with meta-engines as I would like. So, I decided to take an online professional development course called "Finding the Best Educational Resources on the Web." Now, two weeks into the six-week course, I suddenly stumble across the following research on Recommended Search Engines from UC Berkeley.Google currently is the winning web search engine and so people need to learn to use it really well...Google alone is not always sufficient, however. Less than half the searchable Web is fully searchable in Google. We no longer recommend using any meta-search engines.
I was curious about the 'hidden web' that is unsearchable using Google. A prime example was found posted by Danny Sullivan on SearchEngineWatch.com.
Annoyingly at Google, one possibly good article on the topic isn't accessible, because it come from Google Scholar, where this academic paper is allowed to be cloaked. That makes it searchable but not actually viewable except to those with paid subscriptions. Another potentially good page goes to a 404 not found error. Other pages have references to this movement but no real explanation of it.
Students (and people in general) need to understand how to better structure queries, how to make use of different tools and even how to stop using search engines and fall back on other resources (such as professional librarians). Search engines are great in many ways, but they aren't, nor ever have been, perfect tools either BG or AG.
Before I give suggest tips to improve your future searches, think about the following question:
When did Google enter the lexicon?
When our digital natives use the word "google", the word falls into more than one category depending on its use. Here are a few examples of each in sentence form.
- Noun - Google uses High PageRank, meaning that the most popular, relevant sites link to the page. How accurate is PageRank?
- Adjective - The Google directory searches the web, organized by topic into category.
- Verb - Just google it. (I blame Nike for that one.)
- Preposition - BG and AG are, respectively, Before Google and After Google. I guess google, in this case, 'google' is used as the object of the preposition. But, since it ties in nicely with Sullivan's conclusions above, I couldn't resist mentioning it here.
Tips to improve your Search
1. Use your brain. Try more than one search engine and compare search results.
This link, Choose the best search for your information need, will introduce you to a wide variety of search engines that can help you meet different needs.
2. Create a del.icio.us account to organize your bookmarks online, and access them easily with tags.
Add the delicious help buttons to your browsers Toolbar. Just drag and drop.
3. Download the updated Firefox 3.0 browser and add the Free Firefox Google Preview Extension.
NOTE: This newer version of Firefox does not support the Delicious Bookmarks Add-on currently usable with Firefox 2.0. You (and I) will have to wait until they create another update for Firefox 3.0. Until then, add the help buttons mentioned in #2 above.
4. Review the following links to types of search engines and learn about differences between various kinds of web sites including directories, individual search engines, meta search engines, and specialized search engines. Finally, identify their advantages and disadvantages.
Searching the Internet: Search Engines and Subject Indexes
This site quickly defines the various types of search engines available and links you directly to the various subject indexes.
How to search for Internet resources
From top to bottom, lists 46 search engines from A-Z, then identifies 7 Kid Safe search engines, concluding with a step-by-step tutorial for searching with Vivisimo, a clustering technology described in Introducing Clustering 2.0.
After accessing Vivisomo, I added the following note and clipped the image for your reference.
Selecting the "Our Site" button will search Vivisomo, while "The Web" button redirects you to the Clusty web page.
Clusty, the clustering search engine.
Enjoy this recent addition to search technology that groups search results into folder topics. I'm planning to spend lots of time reviewing this one for myself.
Who links to my website?
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