Changing Landscape of Search

Photo: The "new" Old Shambles http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/42671 taken by Keith Williamson http://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/104 This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License The changing landscape of search: essential new tools for finding information John Rylands University Library Wednesday, 14 th July 2010 Presenter: Karen Blakeman

This is me!
Email: [email_address]
Web site: http://www.rba.co.uk/
Blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/karenblakeman
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbainfo
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/karenblakeman
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/karenblakeman
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/karenblakeman
Actually, just Google “Karen Blakeman”
16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

Outline for the day 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

What’s changing?
Bing-Yahoo deal
Yahoo to use Bing’s search engine
Some country versions already using Bing web search, the rest will follow during the year
Yahoo will “still be innovating on top of the Bing results”
Lots of stuff happening with Google
Google caffeine
Personalisation
Social media
Bing, Yahoo and Google all including social media in their results, for example Twitter, blogs, Facebook, Myspace, discussion forums
Interfaces continually changing

What’s changing?
“ Traditional” search
centralised databases of web pages, images, video etc
massive amount of data
“ old” information, out of date
“ Real time” search
live, real-time searching of tweets, videos, blog postings etc
limited to “current” data & selected networks
up to the minute but skewed view of a topic

Why social media?
It is where many companies and organisations market themselves, provide customer support and distribute information
It is where an increasing proportion of the population grow up & they don’t differentiate between the different means of communication
It is where an increasing number of people feel comfortable and share information
It’s impossible to ‘gag’ social networks
BBC NEWS | Politics | When is a secret not a secret?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8304908.stm
For serious research, social media and professional networks are not optional extras - they are an essential part of your research strategy
16 July 2010 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

How do people search?
Publican hiring bar staff uses Facebook to pre-screen candidates
Student used YouTube to find information on the life cycle of the Duck Billed Platypus for an essay
Business students assignment on advertising history of Cadbury’s Crème Egg and Dairy Milk – Youtube!
Newsletter editor looking for images of autumn leaves, specific colours required (Chromatik)
Twitter and blogs used as an essential part of reputation monitoring
What’s happening at conferences e.g. Online Information 2009 #online09 - Twitter, Slideshare

Unrealistic expectations
Original TV coverage of the storming of the Bastille
Podcast of Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg address
not an actor but THE Abraham Lincoln
Photo of the baby Jesus with Joseph and Mary (9 year old asked “Didn’t any of the shepherds or the wise men have mobiles?”)

Google first page results 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk Results from Google News & blogs Latest results - rolling feed of headlines from Twitter, blogs, discussions

Google first page results 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk Images Wikipedia article Blog posting listing videos YouTube video Results from my “social circle”: Twitter, RSS feeds, FriendFeed, Google Wave contacts etc.

Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ , http://search.yahoo.co.uk/
Layout and results vary depending on the country version
Options in the left side menu for limiting your search – depend on the type of search and the country version you are using
Social media real-time results at the top if it is a “hot topic”

16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk Currently only available in the US version of Bing

Is it an improvement?
Results seem more confused and messy, especially Google
Not always clear how social media results are selected
Available options sometimes vary depending on country version of the search engine
Social media results not comprehensive
Results pages are giving a very selective and superficial overview
Need to target search more precisely
for example use Google Advanced Search and options in the left hand menu
search specifically for news, videos, photos
search social media separately
need to know about specialised search engines (a bit like the good old bad old days of the first online databases!)

Tara Brabazon – Annual Learning & Teaching Conference 2010
MDX Annual Learning & Teaching Conference 2010: Tara Brabazon keynote address - FULL VIDEO
http://altcmu.blogspot.com/2010/06/tara-brabazon-keynote-address-video.html
“ Choices and our thinking about choices actually decreases”
“ This is not great information ... it is the Macdonald, fries and coke of the information age”

Let’s get the essential commands
out of the way

General search techniques
By default, the main search tools look for all of your terms in a page
Use double quote marks around phrases or names
To exclude pages containing a term, precede the term with a minus sign (-) but use with care
Focus your search in areas of the page
- use advanced search screens or commands
- inurl: for example UK inurl:carbonemissions
looks for your terms/phrase in the URL
- intitle: or allintitle: for example UK intitle:"carbon emissions"
looks for your terms/phrase in the title of the page

General search techniques
Search sites or domains using the advanced search screen or site: command
wind turbine energy generation site:statistics.gov.uk
wind turbine energy generation site:gov.uk
Imagine what you would like to appear in your ideal document and include those terms in your strategy
- renewable energy generation UK wind solar wave hydro
Repeat your key search terms in your search strategy
tar sands EROEI
tar sands EROEI EROEI EROEI
Change the order of your terms
biodiesel fuel UK buses efficiency
biodiesel fuel efficiency UK buses

File format search
Use advanced search options to limit your search to file types or format:
pdf or doc for government or industry/market reports
xls for data and statistics
ppt or pdf for presentations, experts on a topic
Use Google and Yahoo Advanced Search
Bing.com sometimes picks up unique content
use command filetype: in your search strategy e.g. filetype:ppt car ownership UK

Presentations
For :
find experts on a topic
what are companies doing
introduction to a topic or a general overview
data and market statistics
company structures, who’s who
Presentation search:
Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/
Authorstream http://www.authorstream.com/
Slideboom http://www.slideboom.com/
Slidefinder http://www.slidefinder.net/

Docjax
http://www.docjax.com/
searches pdf, xls, doc, ppt in Yahoo and Google

Slideshare.net 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk Search: biofuels UK public transport

Slidefinder
http://www.slidefinder.net/
Identifies individual slides within a presentation

Slidefinder
Can limit search to universities
Also Advanced Search to search areas of slides

Is your web history switched on? Now Switched on by default
Google adjusts your search results according to what you have clicked on in the past
See: Personalized Search for everyone http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html and Karen Blakeman's Blog - Your Google results are about to get weirder http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2009/12/17/your-google-results-are-about-to-get-weirder/
Google 16 July 2010 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Learn How Google Works: in Gory Detail
http://www.ppcblog.com/how-google-works/

Google search results
Additional search features previously hidden under “Show options” now in left hand side menu of your results page
16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk ?

Unique Google search features
Similar or related pages
looks for pages that are similar in type and content
click on the Similar link next to the page in your results list
or use the related: command e.g. related:www.bwea.com

Automatically looks for variations on your terms
to stop it, precede your terms with plus signs e.g. +Norne oil field to stop Google looking for ‘Horne’
or use double quote marks around the term or phrase “Norne”
Numeric range search
can be weights, distances, years, prices, measurements of any sort
use Advanced Search screen
or the search box on the Google home page
search term(s) first value..second value unit of measurement
toblerone 1..6 kg
world oil production forecasts 2010..2015

Proximity
use the asterisk (*) to stand in for one or more terms
useful when searching for people
separates the terms by one or more words
Karen * Blakeman picks up:
Karen Blakeman
Karen Mary Blakeman
Karen Sands Blakeman
Karen Marie Blakeman
solar * panels picks up:
solar heating panels
solar electricity panels
solar thermal panel
solar voltaic panels
solar concentrator panels

Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.co.uk/
http://search.yahoo.co.uk/ http://search.yahoo.com/
Deal with Bing
Some country versions already using Bing web search, rest will follow during the year
Now includes options in the left side menu for limiting your search (vary depending on type of search and country version of Yahoo)

Yahoo!
Results are ranked in a different order to Google
Image search incorporates Flickr
Indexes first 500 K of a document (Google 101 K)
Region command
region:
e.g. region:europe, region:mediterranean
others are africa, asia, centralamerica, northamerica, southamerica, mideast, southeastasia, downunder

Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.co.uk/
very busy interface!
http://search.yahoo.co.uk/
simpler, Google like interface

Yahoo!
http://search.yahoo.co.uk/
Advanced Search hidden under “More”
Similar options to Google Advanced Search

Bing
http://www.bing.com/ (was live.com)
Described as a “decision engine”
Results tend to be more consumer oriented
Results vary considerably depending on the country version
most features only available in the US version
Incorporating real time, social media results into main search (US version)
Advanced Search screen ‘minimalist” but can use commands (see Search Engine Summary and Comparison Chart http://www.rba.co.uk/search/compare.pdf )
Major television advertising campaign in US and a few other selected countries
http://www.youtube.com/user/bing
[general response in the UK – “what was that all about?”]

Compare search engines
TripleMe
http://www.tripleme.com/
compares Google, Yahoo and Bing side by side
Blindsearch
http://blindsearch.fejus.com/
compare Google, Yahoo and Bing results for web or images
vote on which are the best without seeing the branding
Zuula
http://www.zuula.com /
runs your search through a range of search tools one by one
order can be customised
Browsys Finder (was Intelways/Crossengine)
http://www.browsys.com/finder
runs your search through a plethora of search tools one by one

Specialist search tools
A few examples

Intute
Intute - Blog - Intute plans for the future – 2010 and beyond
http://www.intute.ac.uk/blog/2010/04/12/intute-plans-for-the-future-2010-and-beyond/

Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com/
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
“ Google Scholar is brain damaged” Peter Jasco, Trends in Professional and Academic Online Information Services, presented at INFORUM, 22 nd May 2007, Prague
Use with caution and be aware that there are huge gaps in coverage

Scirus
http://www.scirus.com/
Scientific, scholarly, technical and medical information
Elsevier journals
Also web sites, patents and pre-prints
Good advanced search features
date searching, author searching etc.

Scirus

iSEEK
http://www.iseek.com/
Clusters results into topics, people, places, organisations, date & time
“ Education” option – more research oriented pages

Biznar
http://www.biznar.com/
Real time federated search of selected business resources, some of them “hidden web” or “deep web”
Click on Advanced Search to see a list of the sources

Search4oil http://www.search4oil.com
Information on oil and gas exploration
Concentrates on technical papers (mostly priced)

http://www.search4oil.com/
People, Feature

Chemspider
http://www.chemspider.com/
A chemistry search engine aggregating & indexing chemical structures and their associated information into a single, free of charge, searchable repository
Users encouraged to correct errors in data from peer reviewed journals, patents, FDA etc.
Does ChemSpider Have Millions of Errors? http://www.chemspider.com/blog/does-chemspider-have-millions-of-errors.html

Healthmash.com 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

Alacrasearch
http://www.alacra.com/alacrasearch/
Google custom search engine

LGSearch
http://lgsearch.net/
Another Google custom search engine
Searches UK public sector web sites

Directionlessgov.com 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

New ways of accessing statistics
Guardian World Government Data vs.
data.gov.uk
16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk Guardian Data Blog http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog Guardian World Government Data http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data - a better way of searching government statistics sites!

Ranking Web of World Repositories http://repositories.webometrics.info/ 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk (Added during the workshop)

Wolfram Alpha
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
“ Computational knowledge engine”
“ Curated data”
gathered from a variety of sources and added to their database
Does not give you the source of the answers
Sometimes very out of date
Sometimes wrong
Have to ask the question in the right way
Good for maths homework!

Images
Be very, very careful when re-using images – check COPYRIGHT
Google, Yahoo and Bing all have good image search options
Check out Creative Commons images
does not mean you can use the image as you wish
several CC licences with varying levels of restrictions

Creative Commons and public domain images
Karen Blakeman's Blog Free-to-use images might not be
http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2009/07/16/free-to-use-images-might-not-be/
Google advanced image search - use the pull down menu under usage rights
Flickr Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons
Multicolr Search Lab http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/
Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/
MorgueFile.com http://www.morguefile.com/
Geograph http://www.geograph.org.uk/
Most of the images on US government web sites (but do check)
Nasa http://www.nasa.gov/

Images - Google
Colour and similar image options now in main image search
only one colour can be selected

Similar images
Available in Google and Bing

Images - Bing 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk No page breaks – just keep scrolling down

Images – Google Swirl
Image Swirl in Google Labs
http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/
Google experiments with Image Swirl
http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2009/11/19/google-experiments-with-image-swirl/
Seems to concentrate on patterns and shapes rather than colours

Images – Google Swirl 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

Chromatik - Image search by colour http://chromatik.labs.exalead.com/
Colour choice now in standard Exalead image search
can select more than one colour
More options on Chromatik
Review at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2009/09/16/searching-for-images-by-colour/
Search by colour and keyword
Images from Flickr but can’t click through to original page to check copyright or creative commons licence

Multicolr Search Lab http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/
Search for up to 10 colours
No key word searching of content
Flickr creative commons images

Geograph.org.uk
UK and Ireland photos of landmarks and buildings for every Ordnance Survey grid

Google Maps: Property
http://maps.google.co.uk/
Run a search on a post code, town or city and add property to your search.
For example:
RG4 5BE property
Location of houses and flats for sale or rent displayed on a Google map
can click through to further details
street view
photos (if available)
transport links

News
Newspapers, journals, trade press
Blogs
Twitter
Video
Podcasts
Set up alerts and RSS feeds
Google News
http://news.google.co.uk/
good regional, national, international and trade press coverage
free sources only so misses some important publications
useful way of identifying industry publications

Where UK Newspaper Websites Get Their Traffic http://paidcontent.org/article/419-interactive-chart-where-uk-newspaper-websites-get-their-traffic/ 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

http://news.google.co.uk/ 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

Chipwrapper
http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/
Google Custom Search Engine
The Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, The Telegraph, ITN, Sky News, BBC
Produced by Martin Belam
http://www.currybet.net/

http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/ 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk Twitter Greasemonkey script add-on in my personal Firefox – adds 5 latest tweets to top of all Google searches. http://mt-hacks.com/20090302-realtime-twitter-search-results-on-google.html

News - Silobreaker http://www.silobreaker.com/
not new but not widely known
covers free resources
news, blogs, video, tweets
geographical location of stories
social media and real time information
people
networks

Video & Audio
Search engines’ video/audio tabs
YouTube, Vimeo.com, iTunes U
Blinkx - http://www.blinkx.com/
Truveo – http://www.truveo.com/
country versions available
Zuula - http://www.zuula.com/
click on the video tab
Browsys Finder (formerly Intelways/Crossengine)
http://www.browsys.com/finder/
click on the video tab
Podcasts associated with news stories on e.g. BBC, The Guardian, New Scientist, Nature etc.
Odeo - http://www.odeo.com/

Video Archives
Recommended by a workshop participant
BBC Motion Gallery - BBC Archive
http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/gallery/home/archives.do
NewsFilm Online
http://www.nfo.ac.uk/

iTunes – search on coeliac 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

Voxalead http://voxaleadnews.labs.exalead.com/
Speech to text technology – search inside videos
Demonstration that is not up to date
Technology being incorporated into some news web sites

Blogs and blog search tools
Blogs are a very easy and quick means of publishing
New postings are picked up within minutes - sometimes seconds – of publication
RSS feeds for alerts and keeping up to date
Google left side menu
Blogs
By date and time
Latest, Past 24 hours, Past week include large proportion of forums, news and press releases, blog postings
Blog search tools
Look for the blogroll or list of links on a known, trusted blog
Google blogsearch http://blogsearch.google.com/
Blogpulse http://www.blogpulse.com/
Icerocket http://www.icerocket.com/ (also Twitter and MySpace)
Technorati http://www.technorati.com/

Searching Twitter and tweets
To use Twitter’s Find People you need to be signed in to Twitter
Alternatively search for people or organisations using Tweepz ( http://www.tweepz.com/ )
Searching public tweets
http://search.twitter.com/ , http://www.twazzup.com/
Backtweets.com – enter the URL of a web site or page to see who has referred to it in a tweet
Phil Bradley's weblog: Twitter Search - 20 alternative search engines
http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2009/03/twitter-search-20-alternative-search-engines.html

Twitter: search.twitter.com and twazzup.com 16 July 2010 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

http://search.twitter.com/ – advanced search 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk Often doesn’t work!!

Twitter fail whale  16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

Who is referring to you on Twitter? http://www.backtweets.com/ 16/07/10 www.rba.co.uk

Facebook
Often used to pre-screen applicants for a job, so be careful what you put on your page!
Track down individuals – Australian case
Lawyer uses Facebook to serve legal documents - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/12/15/2447037.htm
Look for groups or pages for an organisation (are they genuine?)
Some professional groups
Pages now used extensively to market organisations and services and for market research
Reputation monitoring and management

LinkedIn.com
Check up on individuals, companies, groups

Cluuz
http://www.cluuz.com/
“ Cluuz … core technology understands the relationship between the entities, terms, or persons searched leading to more relevant, easy to understand search results”
Network visualisation - easier to see connections between individuals and organisations than reading the text of a 10-20 web pages
Results may change from one day to the next, one hour to the next

Cluuz 16 July 2010 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

People networks & Search Tools
Beware mash-ups
a website or application that combines content from more than one source to generate a new page or resource
usually automated with minimal human input or control
For example:
Zoominfo
http://www.zoominfo.com/
uses multiple web sources to generate profiles of people and networks
subject of a profile can update or correct their profile but no checking done by Zoominfo

123People.com
Searches
image sections of major search engines
Flickr
Facebook
MySpace
LinkedIn
blogs
web
videos
news

The People Search Engine – Whoozy.com 16 July 2010 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Pipl http://www.pipl.com/
“ Pipl's query-engine helps you find deep web pages that cannot be found on regular search engines.
Pipl is designed to retrieve information from the deep web, our robots are set to interact with searchable databases and extract facts, contact details and other relevant information from personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records and numerous other deep-web sources.”

Search tools for social media
Excellent presentation from Phil Bradley covers the best
http://www.slideshare.net/Philbradley/social-media-search-engines
“ 20 search engines that each add something into social media search, and they’re all worth exploring in some detail”
My two personal favourites from his list
http://www.icerocket.com/
http://www.addictomatic.com/

Netvibes.com
New dashboard feature (must be signed in to your Netvibes account)
type in your keywords and Netvibes automatically searches across news, social media, videos etc.
looks in places you might not think of

Design your own search engine
For
regularly searched sites
selected sites on a topic
searching sites on a reading list
Google Custom Search Engines
http://www.google.com/cse /
at least hundreds of sites, maybe thousands!
can import lists of sites
Need a Google account to set one up
Cannot search password protected sources or sites where you have to fill in a form to access the information

Create your own Google CSE 16 July 2010 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Host it on Google
Keep it private or make it public
URLs are horribly long but you can create a TinyURL, Bit.ly URL etc. to make it easier for your users

Disappearing pages
Search engine cache copies
Google, Yahoo, Bing
Firefox users
install the Resurrect Pages add-on
UK Web Archive
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/
Wayback machine
http://www.archive.org/
from 1996 to about 1 year ago
navigate the archived site or type in the full URL of the document if known
27 November 2006 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 16 July 2010 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Wayback Machine 16 July 2010 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Further information & keeping up to date
Information World Review (IWR) and IWR Blog
http://www.iwr.co.uk/ , http://blog.iwr.co.uk/
Phil Bradley’s Blog
http://philbradley.typepad.com/
Karen Blakeman’s Blog
http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/
Search engine blogs (take your pick – Google has dozens)
http://www.google.com/press/blogs/directory.html
Google Blogoscoped
http://blogoscoped.com/
Annual Online Information Exhibition, London, 30 th November – 2 December 2010
http://www.online-information.co.uk/
Extensive programme of free seminars, updates and master classes on the exhibition floor.

Changing Landscape of Search

by Karen Blakeman

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