Alternative Search Tools

Web Search Academy Internet Librarian International 26th October 2011 Alternative Search Tools Karen Blakeman http://www.rba.co.uk/ Twitter: @karenblakeman [email_address] 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

Why not Google?
Google mangling your search
correcting correct search terms
weird automatic synonym searching
not searching for all of your terms
“ personalisation”
Best results may be at the bottom of your results list
other search tools rank and order documents in different ways
Google can’t look inside databases or password protected areas
Specialist information requires specialist tools
26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

Bing and Yahoo
Yahoo now uses Bing’s database and ranking algorithms for most country versions
Many of the Advanced Search commands are similar to Google’s
see Search Tools Summary and Comparison http://www.rba.co.uk/search/compare.shtml
Bing advanced search screen minimalist - use commands
detailed list at Advanced Operator Reference http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff795620.aspx (some no longer work)
Also beware – “Bing Adds Adaptive Search, Customized by Your Search History - Search Engine Watch”
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2109647/Bing-Adds-Adaptive-Search-Customized-by-Your-Search-History

Bing and Yahoo 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk Bing and Yahoo starting to behave like Google and automatically “correcting” what they think are mistakes Need to prefix terms with + signs or use “..” around terms to force exact match (Google now only allows “..”)

Bing
Most of the interesting developments and features are only available in the US version
Results tend to be more consumer/retail focused unless using advanced search features
Coverage not identical to Google’s - sometimes yields important unique content, especially in research and business
Often more up to date than Google

Bing Maps
http://www.bing.com/maps/
“ Classic”
http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/
uses Sliverlight
more interactive
automatically changes type of view as you zoom in
Multimap, Birdseye, Aerial, Streetside (not available for all towns or countries), Ordnance Survey Map view
“ After Little Resistance in Germany, Bing Expands Streetside Photos Across Europe”
http://searchengineland.com/after-little-resistance-in-germany-bing-expands-streetside-photos-across-europe-96351
Often has problems finding correct location or finding anything at all
have to try various combinations of terms e.g. Portsmouth Central Library instead of just Portsmouth Library

Bing Maps 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk ??

Exalead
http://www.exalead.com/search/
Demonstration for their enterprise search
Small database
Frequency of update?
Has NEAR/n command for proximity searching
Link command that actually works
Supports full Boolean
filetype, site, intitle, inurl
But phonetic and approximate spelling unreliable

DuckDuckGo
http://duckduckgo.com/
No tracking, no “filter bubble”
site: inbody: intitle: filetype:
sort:date to sort by date (uses results from Blekko)
region:cc (e.g. de) to boost a country
Syntax and keyboard shortcuts at http://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html
Maths, conversions, programming syntax and shortcuts http://duckduckgo.com/tech.html
answer at top of results usually from Wolfram Alpha
!bang commands https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html

Blekko
http://blekko.com/
slashtags for sorting by date (/date), searching for images (/images) and videos (/videos)
Use public slashtags to search a group of web sites covering a particular topic or type of site e.g. /library
Or create your own to search your specified list of sites (similar to Google Custom Search Engines)
wind turbine electricity generation /karenblakeman/renewable
“ Musings about librarianship: Using Blekko to search across thousands of library sites” http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2010/11/using-blekko-to-search-across-thousands.html

Blekko
Does not always search for all of your terms
Cannot do filetype, inurl, intitle searches
Drop down menu next to page in results list for
site search (or use /site)
similar pages (or use /similar)
inbound links to the page (or use /links)

Wolfram Alpha http://www.wolframalpha.com/
“ Computational Knowledge Engine”
Very good for calculations and conversions
Assumes your location from your IP address
Available features and search options change depending on your location
Have to ask the question in the right way

Wolfram alpha
Curated data and information
Can be very out of date
Sometimes totally wrong!
No reference to original source - only a list that is intended as a guide to further sources of information

Google Scholar
A useful place to start your research or if you are looking for a specific paper but.....
No source list, not comprehensive and omits many key scientific publications
Both peer-reviewed and un-reviewed articles, pre-prints, institutional repositories, references to books, citations
Does not use publishers’ meta data
Author search unreliable, search on year of publication unreliable
Sometimes does weird things with your search terms
Peter Jasco - Google Scholar's Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6698580.html

Microsoft Academic Search
http://academic.research.microsoft.com/

Microsoft Academic Search
Problems
coverage
sometimes gets the author completely wrong
“ Will the Real Scott Wilson Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up”
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/will-the-real-scott-wilson-please-stand-up-please-stand-up/
26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk M Edwards should be Martin Edwards not Maria-Benedicta Edwards

COnnecting REpositories - CORE
http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk /
“ UK’s first open access full-text search engine to aid research JISC” http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2011/09/openaccess.aspx

Selected specialist tools - URLs
http://www.chemspider.com/
http://biznar.com/
http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/
http://philpapers.org/
http://www.mednar.com/
http://www.scirus.com/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
http://www.healthmash.com/

Selected specialist tools 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

And a few more .... 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

Yahoo Finance 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

Google can seriously damage your news
Experiment by Mary Ellen Bates
Is Google really filtering my news? - Librarian of Fortune
http://www.librarianoffortune.com/librarian_of_fortune/2011/09/is-google-really-filtering-my-news.html
Highlights
More than 25% of stories showed up in only one searcher’s results
Almost one in five searchers saw a story that no one else saw
Only 12% of searchers saw the same 3 stories in the same order
And it’s about to get worse – “Google News Launches "Standout" Tag for Featured Content” http://searchengineland.com/google-news-launches-standout-tag-for-featured-content-94256

News - Silobreaker.com 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

Silobreaker - networks 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk Can change the emphasis using the slider bars

Statistics http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/ 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

The Guardian
Guardian data store - data journalism and data visualization h ttp://www.guardian.co.uk/data
Data and analysis on topics that are in the news, links to the original datasets are provided
Guardian World Government Data
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data

Zanran
http://www.zanran.com/
“ Zanran – a new data search engine”
http://awareci.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/zanran-a-new-data-search-engine/

Want to explore other stuff? Zuula.com
Type in your search once and work your way through the search tools
Can edit search tools order and remove unwanted ones

Suffering Google withdrawal symptoms? 26/10/11 www.rba.co.uk Decide which sites you want to search and design your own Google custom search engine

Create your own search engine without Google
Blekko.com
Create a slashtag
Musings about librarianship: Using Blekko to search across thousands of library sites
http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2010/11/using-blekko-to-search-across-thousands.html
Gigablast Custom Topic Search
http://gigablast.com/cts.html
up to 500 sites
Rollyo.com
powered by Yahoo
maximum of 25 sites per Searchroll
doesn’t work for me most of the time 

http://www.rba.co.uk	48
http://lonewolflibrarian.wordpress.com	40
http://hrazvedka.ru	17
http://rba.co.uk	3
http://jbegzsuren.posterous.com	2

Alternative Search Tools

by Karen Blakeman on Oct 26, 2011

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