Searching without Google

Searching without Google Online Information, 2011 #online11 Karen Blakeman karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk Twitter: @karenblakeman http://www.rba.co.uk/as/ This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License X X X X

Outline for the day
Overview of how Google (possibly) works, current issues and problems
Alternative general search tools
Specialist search tools, including social media
Your strategies for the future
Please note: the printed slides were created over a week ago and there may have been new developments since then. This means that in the live workshop we may cover additional tools and techniques or that some may no longer be available.
27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Google knows best 27/11/11 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

No plus sign any more and Google ignores “...”
Dear Google, stop messing with my search : http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/08/dear-google-stop-messing-with-my-search/

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's Collateral Damage: SEO Cat & Mouse Game http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/collateral-damage.php 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk
Google revenues
- $29.321 billion ($8.505 billion net)
- Q1+Q2+Q3=$27.301 billion ($7.032 billion net)
2011 Financial Tables - Google Investor Relations http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

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”
Each may have over 50 variations
/

Google knows us so well 27/11/11 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 is doing its own thing:
Assuming typos without giving you the option to refuse the so-called “correction”
Looks 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
BUT we do now have Verbatim search – exact match search and removes personalisation
What I see on my screen for a search is not what you’ll see on yours for the same search

Google Verbatim search
Run your search first and then select Verbatim from the left hand menu on your results page
Appears that you can include advanced search commands in your strategy
Google: Verbatim for exact match search http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/18/google-verbatim-for-exact-match-search/

Google searches – zeolites environmental remediation 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk “ Normal” search Verbatim (identical to &pws=0) Chrome Incognito

Google is good at....
Localisation
Country versions give priority to local content
Localisation at town/city level
may have to tell Google where you are based
don’t have to tell Google my town if I am looking a local restaurant, taxi or plumber
especially useful when using a mobile device
Personalisation? Varies from person to person as to whether it is useful
Image search
Maps (better than Bing for many countries)
Google Finance
Overall coverage and rolling out features worldwide

Yahoo
Now uses Bing’s web and image databases and generates the same results
except in Japan and Korea
Losing its unique commands
Site Explorer gone (along with link and linkdomain commands?)
Up for sale?
Is there any point recommending it for general searching?

Bing.com
Sometimes more up to date than Google and some unique content
Results tend to be more consumer/retail oriented
Most of the interesting developments and features are only ever available in the US version
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 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk Bing starting to behave like Google and automatically correcting “mistakes” Need to prefix terms with + signs or use “..” around terms to force exact match

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 for UK
“ 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 27/11/11 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
DuckDuckGo – silly name but a neat little search tool http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/07/duckduckgo-silly-name-but-a-neat-little-search-tool/

DuckDuckGo 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

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. /energy
Or create your own slashtag 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)

Blekko link commands
Find pages that link to a page or website
pages with similar content, what people are saying about a page, following up a story
Use slashtags ‘/links’ and ‘/domainlinks’ with a URL or domain me.
http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm /links will find pages
http://www.rba.co.uk/ /domainlinks
Yahoo Site Explorer closes – try Blekko instead
http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/20/yahoo-site-explorer-closes-try-blekko-instead/

Blekko.com – seo option for links to a page 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

iSeek - web
http://iseek.com/
Uses Google as a source as well as Bing and its own crawler

iSeek - education 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Quintura.com 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Cluuz.com (uses Yahoo) 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Finding country specific search engines
Difficult to find up to date listings
Country search engines and Regional Search Engines http://www.philb.com/countryse.htm
Country versions of main search engines
China
Baidu
Russia
Yandex
Czech Republic
Seznam

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

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
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
Even so, better in some ways than the free competition

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/
27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk M Edwards should be Martin Edwards not Maria-Benedicta Edwards

Mendeley.com
Desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers

News - Silobreaker.com 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Silobreaker - networks 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk Can change the emphasis using the slider bars

Stock markets and company financials
Yahoo Finance
Started long before Google Finance, but how much longer will it last?
More information provided by Google Finance
Both use Thomson Reuters, SEC Edgar

Yahoo Finance 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Stock markets and company financials
Share Price and Stock Market Information http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stocks.htm
List of Stock Exchanges http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/List_of_Stock_Exchanges
Official Company Registers http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm
OpenCorporates: The Open Database Of The Corporate World http://opencorporates.com/ (use with care)

Intute
http://www.intute.ac.uk/
Closed in July 2011
Web site still available but not being updated.

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/
http://elib.tiho-hannover.de/virtlib/

Chemspider
Royal Society of Chemistry initiative
Information compiled from multiple sources
Do not need to know any chemistry to search it

Biznar
Real-time federated search of selected business sources
Can narrow down by topic
Includes social media but you may want to remove at least Google Groups from the list – Advanced Search and uncheck the relevant boxes

TechXtra
Engineering, mathematics and computing
Good for technical reports and specifications

PhilPapers
“ PhilPapers is a comprehensive directory of online philosophical articles and books by academic philosophers.”
Human and editorial input - not just a “bot”

Mednar
By the same people who created Biznar

Scirus
Elsevier
Both journals and independent web sites
Good advanced search options
Full text of most journal articles priced

Pubmed 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Healthmash
Pulls together information from a variety of health related web sites and social media

Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Veterinärmedizin 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

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

Yet more.....
Institutional Repository Search http://irs.mimas.ac.uk/demonstrator/
BioMed Central | The Open Access Publisher http://www.biomedcentral.com/
DOAJ -- Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/

Where to find new scholarly research papers: 30 key, free websites Roddy Macleod's Blog http://roddymacleod.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/where-to-find-new-scholarly-research-papers-30-key-free-websites/
Selected resources from the blog and comments
Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology : http://www.sciencedaily.com
DRIVER Search Portal http://search.driver.research-infrastructures.eu/
NEP: New Economics Papers http://nep.repec.org/
CiteULike: Everyone's library http://www.citeulike.org/home
The DART-Europe E-theses Portal (DEEP) http://www.dart-europe.eu/basic-search.php
HighWire (Stanford University) http://highwire.stanford.edu/

Statistics http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/ 27/11/11 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

Open Data Directory
http://open.mflask.com/

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

Market research
Use aggregators as an index to identify likely publishers and go direct to those publishers
Research and Markets
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/
Report Buyer
http://www.reportbuyer.com/
Marketresearch.com
http://www.marketresearch.com/
MindBranch
http://www.mindbranch.com/

Images - Bing 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Bing 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk Options in the left hand sidebar similar to Google “ More sizes” but no “similar” option

Bing – Visual Search 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk Not available in all country versions – content varies

Bing – Visual Search 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk Check accuracy of associated information - may be out of date

Flickr
Flickr Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons or advanced search screen http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/
Use Advanced Search for date options

Compfight – http://www.compfight.com/
Search interface for Flickr
Can select Creative Commons or photos that can be used commercially

Images - other sources for Creative Commons and public domain images
Idee Inc Multicolr Search Lab http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/
Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/
check the licence information towards the bottom of the page e.g. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Beach_by_Thomas_Beach.jpg
MorgueFile.com http://www.morguefile.com/ - public domain
Geograph http://www.geograph.org.uk/ Creative Commons 2.0
Most of the images on US government web sites are public domain (but do check)
NASA http://www.nasa.gov/ - public domain
27 November 2011 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk

Multicolr Search Lab http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/
Search for up to 5 colours – can adjust proportions of colour
No key word searching of content
Flickr creative commons images – clicking on an image takes you to its Flickr page

Video
YouTube, Google Video search (not the same as YouTube)
Vimeo.com, DailyMotion.com
iTunes, iTunes U
Blinkx - http://www.blinkx.com/
good for catching up with news
Zuula - http://www.zuula.com/
click on the video tab
Browsys Finder http://www.browsys.com/finder/
click on the video tab

Bing Videos 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Social media as part of search
Social and professional networks included in both Google’s and Bing’s results – degree of integration depends on whether you are signed in to an account
It is where many organisations and companies market and promote their services and products
It is where the conversations about companies, products and services are taking place
It is where people share information
People expect organisations to automatically pick up on their complaints and problems
Now an essential part of search

LinkedIn.com
For companies as well as people
Boolean Black Belt-Sourcing/Recruiting http://www.booleanblackbelt.com/

Blogpulse.com – ‘Trend this’ 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Topsy.com 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Socialmention.com 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Icerocket 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Twazzup.com 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Paper.li - create your own newspaper 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Paper.li – individual Twitterstream http://paper.li/karenblakeman 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Paper.li – keyword http://paper.li/karenblakeman/1321447614 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk

Suffering withdrawal symptoms? 27/11/11 www.rba.co.uk Decide which sites you want to search and design your own Google custom search engine

Create your own search engine using something else
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

Keeping up to date
Inside Search http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/
Official Google Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/
Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/
Boolean Black Belt-Sourcing/Recruiting http://www.booleanblackbelt.com/
Karen Blakeman’s Blog http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/
Phil Bradley's weblog http://philbradley.typepad.com/

http://heyjude.wordpress.com	3677
http://www.rba.co.uk	788
http://lonewolflibrarian.wordpress.com	171
http://topas.gozapit55.com	110
http://paper.li	105
http://feeds2.feedburner.com	78
http://judyoconnell.com	33
http://rba.co.uk	16
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	9
http://librarians.collected.info	9
http://berbaltavar.wikispaces.com	8
http://theantiquarianlibrarian.blogspot.com	8
http://www.onlydoo.com	5
http://www.library.ceu.hu	4
http://a0.twimg.com	4
http://uprb.wordpress.com	4
http://www.pageflakes.com	3
http://t.co	2
http://feeds.feedburner.com	2
http://hootsuite.com	1
http://the-refreshing-sip.blogspot.com	1
http://leapf.org	1
http://heyjude.wordpress.com.	1

Searching without Google

by Karen Blakeman

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