Searching without Google

Searching without Internet Librarian International, 2011 Karen Blakeman karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk Twitter: @karenblakeman http://www.rba.co.uk/ This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

How Google works
“ Dear Bing, We Have 10,000 Ranking Signals To Your 1,000. Love, Google”
http://searchengineland.com/bing-10000-ranking-signals-google-55473
over 200 hundred “signals”
many have over 50 variations
2010 Revenues $29 billion (net income $8.5 billion)
2011 Q1+Q2+Q3=$27 billion (net income $7) (unaudited)
/
29/10/11 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 a quarter of the 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 three 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

Google knows us so well 29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk Google personalises and tailors your results depending on your location, computer, browser, past searches, what you have looked at in the past, your +1s, your blocked sites, Google experiments, your Google+ account, your other social networks, what you do on your android phone, what you had for breakfast...and anything else it can find by rummaging around in your Google dashboard. Check your dashboard at http://www.google.com/dashboard/

Google knows best 29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk Hewish mild Google decided to change my search to Jewish mild = Google decides that coots are lions – changed a search for coots mating behaviour to lions mating behaviour

Google is doing its own thing:
assuming typos without giving you the option to refuse the so-called “correction”
looking for obscure variations and synonyms
‘ +’ sign to enforce exact match has been removed
sometimes ignores quotation marks around phrases
not including all of your terms in the search
What I see on my screen for a search is not what you’ll see on yours for the same search
29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk Time to REBEL!

Yahoo!?
Now uses Bing’s web and image databases and generates the same results
except in Japan and Korea
Losing its unique commands
Up for sale?
Is there any point in using it for general searching?

Bing.com
Often more up to date and some unique content
Results tend to be more consumer/retail oriented
But Bing advanced search screen minimalist - need to use commands
detailed list at Advanced Operator Reference http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff795620.aspx (some no longer work)
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 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

Bing Maps 29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk ??

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
Curated information
Can be very out of date
Sometimes very wrong
No references to original source
Have to ask the question in the right way

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

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/
29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk M Edwards should be Martin Edwards not Maria-Benedicta Edwards

News - Silobreaker.com 29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

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/

A few specialist tools 29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

A few more specialist tools 29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

Statistics http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/ 29/10/11 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

Topsy.com 29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

Socialmention.com 29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

Blogpulse.com – ‘Trend this’ 29/10/11 www.rba.co.uk

Create your own search engine
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

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

http://www.rba.co.uk	1974
http://www.scoop.it	219
http://rba.co.uk	102
http://hrazvedka.ru	23
http://a0.twimg.com	8
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	7
http://admin.totalmarketing.com	1
http://philbradley.typepad.com	1

Searching without Google

by Karen Blakeman on Oct 28, 2011

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