Finding Information
towards a methodology
By Philippe Scheimann MSc MBA
CEO Ayala Alternative Organizational Consulting
philippe@orayala.com
2009
Ayala Alternative Organizational
Consulting Ltd.

Philippe Scheimann
 CEO of Ayala Alternative
Organizational Consulting
 MSc + MBA
 Professional experience on the
Internet since 1990
 Work as an Internet and
management consultant
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Overall view: finding information
A 6 step process:
2. Define your Topic
3. Analyze your Topic
4. 4 types of search tools
5. Table: Search Strategy
6. Summarized evaluation
7. Go back to step 1 3

Define your Topic
Questions to answer
 How much info do you need
 How current
 Type of information
 Time frame
 Language
 Broad subject
 Which source of information
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Analyze your Topic
List of key words
• Unique words used ? '+‘
• Any expression to be put into
“expression"
• Any words you don’t want to use? '-‘
• What are the synonyms ? ‘~’
Use of following sites for focus:
• Surfwax.com, ask, Answers, wikipedia.org
• Collarity, eurekster.com
• Google… 5

Focus – use of surfwax.com
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4 types of search tools
 Search Engines
 Subject Directories
 Invisible Web
 Newsgroups & Experts
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Search Engines
 Google
 Alternatives:
• Globalspec.com for engineers
• Yahoo.com >20 billion "web objects“
• Ask.com > 2 billion searchable pages
• http://www.live.com/ Microsoft
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Why Google?
 Simply the best search
engine
 Biggest web search engine
database:50% of the
searchable Web
 Includes powerful features
and applications
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How Google works
 Spider program finds pages on the
web & builds database
 Search program gives you ways to
search this database
 Page Rank™ arranges your results
 Word proximity and placement
 linking to a page - notion of cluster
 Importance - traffic, popularity of
pages
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Google preferences
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Google account
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“Easy” examples using Google
 Calculator 1200 * 34
 Speed of light, radius of the earth
• "speed of light is * meter per second“
 “The world wide web was invented by *"
 patent 7,169,489
 Flight #
 Address: George W.Bush Washington DC
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Use of some Operators
oil refining the words oil and refining
oil OR refining either the word Oil or the word Refining
“Oil refining" the exact phrase oil refining
refining –sugar the word refining but NOT the word sugar
~refining technologies technologies info for both the word refining
and its synonyms: purify, etc.
define:refining definitions of the word refining from around the
Web.
oil * refining the words oil and refining separated by one or
more words.
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Google
Advanced
Search
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Advanced Search - Google
 OR, AND is per default
 Include (+) or Exclude (-)
 Similar Words ~
 Exact Phrase “ “
 List Similar Pages
 operator:search_term
• Site e.g. site:.il
• Filetype e.g. filetype:pdf
• Link e.g. link:www.orl.co.il
• Intitle
• Inurl
• related
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http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html

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Subject Directories
chosen by people
 http://directory.google.com
selected by the Open Directory
Project
 Librarians' Index http://lii.org
 Infomine http://infomine.ucr.edu
compiled by academic librarians
of the Universities of California.
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http://www.google.com/Top/Business/Energy_and_Environment/Oil_and_Gas/Tools_and_Equipment
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Invisible Web
Deep Web
Deepnet
Hidden Web
Refers to World Wide Web content
not part of the surface Web indexed
by search engines
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Invisible Web – cont’
Archives, buyers guides, calendars of trade
fairs and events, industry website link
lists, statistical information, interactive
databases, glossaries, encyclopedias,
dictionaries, acronym lists, etc.
 Intute
 infomine.ucr.edu
 Librarians' Internet Index: www.lii.org
 Internet Archive: www.archive.org
 direct search: www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htn
 Zoominfo.com
 Pipl.com
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Newsgroups & “Experts”
 Newsgroups
• Usenet e.g sci.engr.control
• Google
• Managed by companies
• Managed by individuals
 Blogs (e.g General Motors)
• Technorati Search Engine for Blogs
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Finding information – 6 step process:
1,2 Define & Analyze your topic
3,4 Four types of search tools & Search Strategy Table
Search Engines Subject "Invisible Web" Newsgroup &
Directories Experts
Sentence Use " ". Check the subject
of your search
No Use as many words Try to find
distinctive as possible distinctive terms
words in Subject
Directories
General topic not first choice Look for a
specialized Look for a newsgroups:
Subject Directory specialized google
focused on topic: database when
about, answers, searching for
wikipedia Facts, Statistics
etc. weblog:technorati
Narrow and Boolean searching e.g Oil and Gas >
specific Operating
Companies
Looking for
facts,
statistics etc
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5,6 Summarized evaluation & Go back to step 1

Summarized evaluation
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Summarized evaluation
Before clicking:
 Read URL
 Personal name
 Personal page ~
 commercial ISP or geocities.com
 Type of domain: .com, .org, .gov...
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Summarized evaluation
When entering the site:
 Check "About“
 Look for the date "last updated"
 Check the authority of the author: "Googling the
author" or zoominfo or pipl
 What is the objective of this site?
 Information: is it accurate, current, objective ?
 Contact
 Owner of the domain: Who is or Domaintools.com
 Credentials
 Publications
 Outside links
 Reverse linking Use alexa.com URL information and
in Google link:URL
 Check the page up in Librarians' Index, 30

Evaluation - Example
 http://www.martinlutherking.org
vs.
http://www.thekingcenter.org
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Information and knowledge
development
"We are drowning
in information
and starving for
knowledge" R.D. Roger
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