Search
The Search category contains articles related to various search engines and strategies.
Last Updated on Monday, April 19 2010 16:26 Written by Pierce Presley Thursday, February 11 2010 05:01
Google is the current king of search engines, to the point that the word is a verb, and part of many pre-date and pre-hiring rituals. In fact, articles and classes are out there specifically to help you manage your Google "footprint".
Many, many stories and projects will begin with googling basic facts about people, places, things and companies. Beyond the basic search lies an even more powerful advanced flavor (which you can access from the front page, though clicking the link will take you to a form that makes it easy), and Google has several specialized searches to find images, videos, scholarly papers and more.
Advanced Search Operators
Google Web Search
- Phrases
- These are contained withing double quotation marks. Very useful for names, e.g. "Pierce Presley".
- Site-specific
- Follows "site:". Allows you to restrict your search to a top-level domain (e.g. ".com", ".org", ".uk") or a specific website (e.g. "ibiblio.org"). Good for when you know something that lets you narrow your search.
- Exclusion
- A preceding minus sign. Used to exclude words, phrases or pretty much any other search operator Google allows (e.g. "-elvis" "-site:arkansas.com"). Hyphens within words don't exclude the second word.
- Wildcard
- An asterisk. Can be used as a placeholder for whole words. Helpful in natural language style queries (e.g. "Pierce Presley writes for * in *").
- Exact term
- A preceding plus sign. Google searches for a limited number of synonyms and close alternate spellings by default. Sometimes that's not what you want (e.g. "+childcare" won't find "child care").
- OR operator
- "OR" in all caps, or the pipe "|" character. Searches for either of the words or phrases on either side of "OR" (e.g. "Bush popular vote 2004 OR 2008"). "AND" is not required because Google defaults to it.
- Numeric Range
- Two period between numbers. Allows you to search for a range (e.g. "1971..2010").
- File Type
- File extension following "filetype:". Restricts search to certain file types that Google can index, including Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and Portable Document Format files (e.g. "filetype:xslx" for Excel 2007 and 2010 spreadsheets). Also "ext:". More on this later.
- Similar Words
- A preceding tilde (~). Searches for the search term and words related to it (e.g. "~reporter" would search for reporter, writer and possibly editor).
- Definition
- "Define:" or "define " preceding the search term. Displays entries from various dictionaries for the search term."Define:" is restricted to the following word; "define " allows use of an unquoted phrase.
- Phone book
- "Phonebook:" or "rphonebook:" preceding term. Searches all or just residential phone listings respectively.
- Movie
- "Movie:" preceding title. Searches for showtime and reviews.
- Stocks
- "Stocks:" preceding ticker symbol (e.g. "stocks: goog"). Shows current stock price and daily history with links to finance sites.
- Weather
- "Weather" preceding zip code or city name.
- Shows the weather for a specific city (e.g. "weather San Antonio").
- Cache
- "Cache:" preceding URL. Shows Google's cached version of the site. Useful for when sites are offline.
- Page Info
- "Info:" or "id:" before a URL. Shows information about a website.
- Related
- "Related:" preceding a URL. Shows pages related to the URL.
- In Anchor Text
- "Allinanchor:" or "inanchor:: preceding terms. All query words must appear in anchor text (e.g. the usually blue underlined text of a link) for the first, only the following term will be searched for in the second.
- In Text
- "Allintext:" or "intext" preceding search terms. Same as above, except term(s) may appear anywhere on the page.
- In Title
- "Allintitle:" or "intitle:" preceding search terms. Same as above, except term(s) must appear in the page title.
- In URL
- "Allinurl:" or "inurl:" preceding search terms. Same as above, except term(s) must appear in URL.
Google Groups
- Author
- "Author:" preceding search term. Searches for Groups messages from the specified author.
- Group
- "Group:" preceding search term. Searches for messages in the specified group.
- Subject
- "Subject:" preceding search term. Searches for messages with the specified subject.
Google News
- Location
- "Location:" preceding term. Find articles from sources in the specified location.
- Source
- "Source:" preceding term. Find articles from the specified source.
Google Product Search (née Froogle)
- Store
- "Store:" preceding term. Searches for products in specified store.
Bing and Other Search Engines
Last Updated on Friday, April 23 2010 09:38 Written by Pierce Presley Monday, February 15 2010 14:18
There is a reason Google is the number one search engine and consistently among the most visited sites on the entire Internet, but it does have limitations and it's certainly not the only forager in this habitat. Microsoft has unveiled its latest attempt to get a piece of this market, Bing, and there are some golden oldies to pay attention to as well, mainly Yahoo and Ask.com. Speaking of Yahoo, don't forget that Web directories can have some hidden gems, too. Finally, you should be aware of the existence of the "dark Web" and learn how to plumb the depths hidden within.
The differences in results come down to two things: spidering and algorithms. Spiders are programs that crawl the Web (get it?) cataloging what they find. How these are programmed has a lot to do with the results they return. Specific results depend on how many of them are deployed and how they choose where to go.
I'm not terribly impressed with Bing as a search engine. The results are as good as Google, though often in a different order, but there's not been a time when Bing reached into its collection and pulled out something unexpected. The maps feature, though, may be better than Google's product on the front end (but I haven't seen a Bing maps mashup yet).
Ask.com failed on its promise of natural language queries ("What is the price of tea in China?" vs. "price tea China"), but it has proven to be a thornier issue than once believed (along with voice and handwriting recognition). That said, it still provides good results and like any other search engine, there's always the possibility it has looked deeper or more recently than Google.
Yahoo plays the aging star who still thinks she's big, it's just the Internet that's gotten small. Its spidering and, thus, its universe of results has always been weaker, but I don't think it ever got over the paradigm shift from having a directory lovingly maintained by human hands and having a database amassed by countless automated seekers. Yahoo still has a plethora of services available, and one to pay attention to is Yahoo Groups. These are discussion groups on the lines of the old Usenet news groups (which have been consumed and largely replaced by Google Groups), and they can often have interesting information about a subject. Certainly consider poking around in them to see if a group is interested in a topic you're covering.
If you don't want to spend your going to all the search sites, you can try Dogpile. It searches Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com, and it even has some advanced capability to let you be more specific without having to figure out each search engine's particular language. It's probably not what you want to use if you're looking for something that might be buried 30 links down the results, but it can alert you to when an engine gives a different answer.
The dark (or deep) Web can be harder to search, and often the search engines probing it are very subject oriented and limited. Rather than list them all here, I'm going to point you toward my Internet Resources page, where you will find links to these sites and some description.
Finally, the general rule about information always applies when searching: check it out.
