Super Searcher Strategies

Mary Ellen BatesOct 23, 2017Reluctant–Entrepreneur.com

@mebs

Search tips & tricks

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@mebs

Don’t get complex

Too many terms = lower resultsDon’t use long OR statements

Graze, don’t just dig deep

Trust Learn to love relevance ranking

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Test Google’s synonyming

Roughly same results for desk,desks, and desk OR desks

Very different results for zoonoses,zoonosis, zoonotic, andzoonoses OR zoonosis ORzoonotic

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Test Google’s adjacency

For terms you want closely related,try all these:

word1 word2word1–word2“word1 word2”

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Use * for proximity search

“concept1 * concept2”

“concept 1 * * concept2”

* and * * are multi-word placeholders

h/t to Tara Calishain / Researchbuzz

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Example: Impact of Twitter inthe workplace

“Twitter * workplace”

“Twitter * * workplace”

“workplace * Twitter”

“workplace * * Twitter”

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Test multiple versions

what is home depot’s market strategy17,200,000 results

home depot market strategy1,890,000 results

“market strategy” “home depot”89,900 results

“home depot” “market strategy”70,800 results

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Test mobile vs desktop results

Google is trying to help…If mobile, you probably want to speak aquery & go somewhereIf desktop, type a query and dosomething online

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Test mobile vs desktop

What words would you use if youspoke your search out loud?

Natural language vs Boolean logic

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Test different words

Industry/specialized terms

Geographic/linguistic differences

Process or outcome

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Use “context” words

OverviewHow to OR tutorial OR helpDatabase OR data setReviewsFigure OR chart OR graph

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Use country-specific Google

Non-US topic? Use other country’sGoogle site

Look for English version

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Need to get smart?

Google Scholar “classic” papers10 most-cited papers from 10 yearsago

tiny.cc/classic-papers

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Pre-view location

Google’s Crisis Map shows youweather, floods, air quality,traffic hazards

google.org/crisismap/

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Get creative with Ngram

Find most frequent words next to aword, over time

*_NOUN termterm *_VERBterm=>term [one term modifyinganother]

books.google.com/ngrams

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*_NOUN nurse

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Clients don’t know what toask for

What other data sets would behelpful?

What is your client not asking youfor?

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Resources for Searchers

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Consider Bing…

Contains:xxx – pages that contain alink to a file type

contains:pdf, contains:xls, etc.

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Use YouTube to learn

Add channel filter to focus yoursearch

Add playlist filter to find collectionof videos

Add Creative Commons filter forreusable content

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Search news chyrons

Archive.org’s Third Eye projectSuper-fast-breaking newsOCR of lower 1/3 of broadcast screenCNN, BBC, Fox, MSNBCFeed at:twitter.com/tracey_pooh/lists/third-eye

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Use link search to validate

Unfamiliar site? See who links to itGigablast syntax is link:the.urlOr try openlinkprofiler.orgDo linking sites show a bias or PoV?Review outgoing links; where to?

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Find “similar” sites

SimilarSites.comBased on content, link analysis, userbehavior, etc.Use to find other good sites

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Peekier.com

Anonymous search engineMostly Bing, and its own crawl

Preview images of the results

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Track global trends

10 top search trends, by country

neomam.com/interactive/trendmap

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Carrot2.org

Meta-search engine, use to review atopic

Web search, PubMed, Wikipedia

Use to ID alternative, relatedconcepts

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Preview shortened URLs

checkshorturl.comType in short URLSee the expanded version, screenshot, description

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PrintFriendly.com

Creates a printer-friendly version ofa web page

Edit out images, extraneous matter,change font size

Browser plug-in, too

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Find Mary Ellen Bates at:

mbates@batesinfo.comTwitter: @mebsLinkedIn: maryellenbatesFacebook: maryellenbatesReluctant–entrepreneur.com

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