Advanced Internet Searching

Phil Bradleyhttp://www.philb.com

Summer 2011

Types of search engine

• Free text– Google, Yahoo, Bing,

• Directory– Yahoo, Open Directory

• Multi/Meta search– Trovando– Browsys

Types of search engine

• Site/Subject specific– BT directory, site search engines

• Hidden/Invisible web– Complete planet

• Social search engines– Icerocket, surchur, twitter

• “The others”

Why use Google?

Timeline

Reading level

Dictionary

Social

Nearby

Visited pages

Not yet visited

Related searches

Sites with images

Time limited

Page previews

Cached version

Basic search techniques

Implied ‘AND’ Phrase Exclude/NOT

Additional terms Changing position More additional terms

More search options: ~

More search options: *

Proximity Search: AROUND(x)

site:

site:.gov.uk

site:<URL>

link:

info:

related:

Advanced search

Filetype: pdf, doc

Filetype:

filetype: all options

Date, usage rights etc

Creative commons

Search preferences

• Language• Safesearch filtering• Google Instant• # of results per page – 10, 20, 30, 50, 100• Results window• Blocked sites

Google images

Google images

Similar images

Images by colour

Imagesize:

Types of image: face

Colour of images

Enhanced ‘did you mean?’

Enhanced Maps

Google Instant

Realtime www.google.com/realtime

One trick ponies• movies location

http://translate.google.com/

Google custom search engines http://www.google.com/cse/

Faganfinder.com/google/

Why not use Google?

Ranking order

• Search term in title, header, URL• Anchor text• 1st paragraph• Frequency• Speed of website• Country version• Personalisation on/off• # of link

Automatic ‘corrections’

Google knows best! http://bit.ly/kBGqIg

Incorrect counts

Serving many pages, single sites

Personalisation

Alternative search engines

• Free text• Directory• Multi/Meta • Social media• Visual results• Real time• Weblog

Bing

Duckduckgo

Exalead

• http://www.exalead.co.uk/search

Yahoo Directory

• http://dir.yahoo.com/

Multi/meta search

• Browsys http://www.browsys.com/search/• Trovando http://www.trovando.it/

Visual search engines

• Redzee http://redz.com/

Spacetime 3D http://search.spacetime.com/

Touchgraph

• http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

Simploos http://beta.simploos.com/

Nexplore http://www.nexplore.com/

Category based engines

• Carrot Clustering http://search.carrot2.org/

Comparing results

• Thumbshots ranking http://www.thumbshots.org/

Blind search:which is best?

http://blindsearch.fejus.com/

Similar sites http://www.similarpages.com

News/Date

• Silobreaker http://www.silobreaker.com/

Multimedia engines

• Audio Visual• Image• Sound

As well as YouTube...

• Trooker http://www.trooker.com/

Sounds

• Soungle http://soungle.com/

Images (as well as Flickr)

• Tag Galaxy http://www.taggalaxy.de/

Blogs

• Google blog search http://blogsearch.google.com/

Social media

• Social Mention http://www.socialmention.com/

Openbook

IceRocket

surchur

Addictomatic

Twitter Advanced

News collation resourcesFlipboard http://flipboard.com/

Zite http://www.zite.com

Pulse.news http://www.alphonsolabs.com/about

Trunk.ly

Some new engines

People search

Blekko

Worldometers.info

Suggestionchain.com

Lanyrd.com

And finally...

• Wayback Machine http://www.archive.org/index.php

Numberquotes.com

BananaSlug http://bananaslug.com/

More resources:

• Which search engine when?

• My Search weblog

• Web search engines

• Alternative search engines

Evaluating sites

Thedogisland

Federal Vampire & Zombie Agency

History of a Victorian Robot

Thank you!

• http://www.philb.com/whichengine.htm • http://www.philbradley.typepad.com/ • http://www.slideshare.net/philbradley/ • philb@philb.com