Internet Searching: Variety is the spice of life

Since I spent so much time in my last post focusing on Google searching, I thought I would share some more of the things I discovered while preparing for my seminar on internet searching. Simple search interface The first thing I discovered is that I like a nice clean simple search interface. I have to admit that Google spoils me that way, but you can find this with other search engines. If blinking text sends you to a padded room and advertizing is not your thing why not try these alternative interfaces. Main pages

• Yahoo
• MSN

Alternatives

• Yahoo
• Yahoo Canada
• MSN
• Sympatico MSN (Canadian content search engine)

Advanced searching The simplest way to start improving your searching is to begin using the advanced search instead of the basic search. You don't have to do a lot of reading to use most of the features. I like that both Google and Yahoo have very similar advanced search pages. It makes it easy for people to transition from one search engine to another. MSN's Search Builder is not a separate page but a little window which helps you to build your search. It's a little different and while I am comfortable with the concept and using the tool it may be too different for novice internet searchers. I guess it all depends on what you learn first! Google Advanced Yahoo Advanced MSN Search Builder Similarities I also discovered that Google, Yahoo and MSN all allow for the use of similar searching strategies. All support the use of boolean operators and nested searching. All use + symbol to make sure a word is included in the search results. All use " " for phrase searching. All use - to remove certain words from search results. All use site: to do search a particular domain name. I guess I always knew that there had to be some commonalities in searching between these search engines but this makes life much easier. Help Sheets While the advanced search engines are a nice quick way to begin improving your search, a little reading will go a long way to making the basic search window work for you. Search engines want to encourage people to use their tool and so supply help sheets. I discovered that while most search engines do provide help sheets, in some cases it is surprisingly difficult to locate the really good stuff. Yahoo Help - Search Tips Yahoo Help - What is Advanced? Yahoo Short Cuts - I love this page but in some instances I can't help but wish there was a Yahoo Canada equivalent! Yahoo Search Services and Tools MSN Web Search Help MSN Keyword and Symbol Reference - A nice one pager but tough to find! Through my preparation for my presentation I came across the following web sites. These are not related to any particular search engine but help people to identify which search engine might be appropriate or supply a quick cheat sheet with tips for many search engines. These seem to have been around for a while and so may not come as a surprise to many of you. Finding information: search engines by Phil Bradley Infopeople's Search Engine Chart I've known about Search Engine Watch for quite some time but really haven't paid to much attention to it. I hear a bunch of gasps coming from cyberspace. I know this is quite probably sacreligous but I just haven't had a lot of time to devote to professional development. I now make the time for professional development and Search Engine Watch is one of the things I .... watch. :) If you've never come across it before, the site is worth a look. It keeps track of the latest trends and details of the search engine world. I love that someone is doing this for me, all I have to do is read the nice concise notes or indepth reviews (depending on time) and I can keep current and look like I know what I'm doing. I believe in learning just enough information to be dangerous. I'll leave developing the expertise up to the experts. But enough of my philosophy of professional development. I'm hoping others will share any really nifty sites they've come across for internet searching tips and tricks. Variety is the spice I am an admitted Google-holic. It's my first choice as a search engine, not necessarily because it's the best but because it's familiar. Since my refresher preparing for my seminar I'm finding myself searching Yahoo because I like the video search and the image search over Google. I go to MSN for the terribly cool Results Ranking sliders in the Search Builder. I'm experimenting more with Clusty and Gigablast for the clustering which I like for more complex searches. I think my final discovery is that I like the variety using multiple internet search engines provides.

GoogleTips and Internet Searching

I recently finished teaching my first seminar on internet searching. It's hard to imagine that I've gotten away with not teaching something like this for so long! It was wonderful to have a good excuse to take a closer look at some internet search engines, it was also more challenging than I expected. This is why I was so excited when a colleague recently e-mailed me this excellent site regarding Google Tips and Tricks: Quick Reference: Google Advanced Operators (Cheat Sheet) by Nancy Blachman. I love seeing all of this information on one page!For some reason Google hasn't figured out how to do this. Their help pages are really thorough but the information is scattered all over the place. When I was doing research for my seminar I ran down the following pages.

Google Help: Advanced Search - This is a nice simple page which shows you how to make the Google Advanced Search features work for you.

Google Help: Cheat Sheet - Every time I see the phrase "Cheat Sheet" I start looking nervously over my shoulder for the teacher. Perhaps this dates me? However, in today's gaming culture the "cheat sheet" is a way to help you navigate through a series of tasks in a computer game quickly and easily. Tips that I use all the time are site: and define:

Advanced Google Search Operators - This is a complete list of all possible search operators. I'm not sure why they weren't all included in the Cheat Sheet. One that I am tring to incorporate into my searching routine is intitle:

Google Help: Search Preferences - This shows you how to set your searching preferences for language and site filtering amongst other things. I don't use this feature because I never think of it. I'm not sure if I would use it even if I did think of it! It is, however, an interesting function.

Google Web Search Features - This links you to different search features available in Google. The content is similar to what you would find if you clicked on More... from the Google home page.

So kudos to Ms. Blachman for representing all this information in one nice tidy package. I’m printing this off. Internet Searching

Before I get a flourish of e-mails from people saying that there is more to searching the internet than Google... I whole heartedly agree! I was asked to cover Google, Yahoo and MSN ... so I did.

It is interesting to note, however, that I did a quick survey at the beginning of the class to see what search engines people where using. There were six seminars and on average 10 people per seminar with roughly 60 attending in total. The seminar attendees were staff (not necessarily professionals) of the local public library system. All of the people attending used Google. 5 people also used Yahoo. 5 people also used Ask Jeeves. 3 people also used Altavista. 4 people also used MSN. 1 also used Vivisimo. None had heard of Gigablast, Teoma or the now sadly defunct Jux2.

What do I make of all this information? Google is a marketing giant to get so many people using its engine. Not too many years ago I suspect Yahoo and perhaps Altavista would have been in similar situations. Internet searching for the general public is easily swayed by trends and marketing.

Role for libraries and librarians

There is a role here for libraries and librarians. Each person in the class wanted to learn more tips and tricks for how to get better searching results. Libraries should be offering classes like this on a regular basis. Teach Google because this is what they are using now but add in Gigablast or Clusty to make them aware of other options.

Meta... what?

One good thing about attending a local conference is running into people you have a passing aquaintance with and striking up surprisingly, interesting conversations. One colleague I ran into at the last conference I attended was Lisa. She works at a different campus than I do and we sort of knew each other but hadn't had the opportunity to chat. The short story is we were so interesting in our conversation that we made a date to talk some more. It turns out that she's really keen on metadata. What is metadata? Metadata comes from latin and is strictly defined as "data about data". Singularly unhelpful definition if you ask me! The way I understand it, not that I'm an expert, is that metadata is a way of describing things just like cataloguing. These things needing describing could be books, CD's, datafiles and web pages, collectively they are known as "information objects". There also appear different metadata standards (they call them initiatives) which can make life confusing. The one that the majority of people seem to have settled on is Dublin Core. Now being a web developer and a librarian I really appreciate how important metadata is in the proper indexing of web pages. Being basically lazy at heart I've let my 400+ web site go without incorporating consistent metadata. Do I hear a collective gasp? :) I could make up all kinds of excuses but at the root of the problem is the idea that I didn't have the time to learn enough about this phenomenon to do a proper job of it. In my conversation with Lisa, I explained my problem and she said "No problem, I'll send you a couple of sites". She sent the e-mail earlier today and rocked my little world. She also ensured I have enough work for a year! Dublin Core Metadata Template "This template lets you fill in fields and transforms your information into HTML-coded DC metadata that you can cut and paste into your code for any web pages you create. It's been around for a long time." (from Lisa) DCdot: Dublin Core metadata editor "This one is even easier. It gathers what metadata it can from the page and lets you edit it and resubmit to see the HTML description which you can then cut and paste." (from Lisa) Who knew it could be this easy? I don't have to read too much of anything, all I really have to do is think back to my cataloguing classes from library school and plug away at the task! I like it. However, if anyone knows of a very short, very non-geeky introduction to Dublin Core Metadata... could you send the info my way? It's probably time I fixed my web site. More Reading:

• Wikipedia: Metadata
• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
• Introduction to Metadata (Getty Research Institute)