Search Engine, Search Strategy and e-Resources

1. Rajan Kumar Kandel
On behalf of
Dr. Dirgha Raj Joshi
Nepal Open University
Faculty of Social Science and Education
Manbhawan, Lalitpur
MPhil in Social Sciences & Education
First & Third Semester (2074 & 2075 winter)
Second Contact Session and Orientation
Program -2076
Date: 20-22 Bhadra, 2076 (9:45-4:30)
Centre: Surkhet Campus (Education), Surkhet

2. Presentation Highlights
 What is an Electronic
Resource?
 What is a Search?
 Search engines
 How search engines work?
 Categories of Search Engines
 Types of Search Engines
 Types of Searching Techniques
 Strategy/steps of a search

3. What is an Electronic
Resource?
 Any work encoded and made available for access
through the use of a computer.
 E.g: Web Sites, Online Databases, E-journals, E-books,
Electronic Integrating Resources, Audio, Visual, and/or
Text Files, image collections…
 Includes electronic data available by remote access and
direct access (fixed media).
 Remote access (electronic resources) – need computer
networks.
 Direct Access (e-resources)- need carriers (e.g.,
discs/disks, cassettes, cartridges) designed to be
inserted into a computerized device or its auxiliary
equipment.

4. What is a Search?
Organized pursuit of information somewhere in a collection of
documents, web pages, data bases and other sources, there is
information that the user wanted to find.
Types of a Search
Internal Search( It is used to find content on a single
website- top right of each page.)
External or Public Search ( It is used to find content on
any website anywhere on the web. E.g. Google)
Meta Search Engine ( It uses the indexes of other search
engines to find content anywhere on the web. E.g. Dog
pile, Mamma, Meta crawler)

5. Search Engines
• Software systems (digital tools) that are designed to
search for information on the World Wide Web
• Identify and respond to specific questions, called key
words and postulate the page called SERP (Search
Engine Result Pages) with relevant information on the
web
• helpful for user requirements (mediator/ bridge
between user and sites), display a lot of web links for any
request
• The information may be a mix of web pages, images, and
other types of files. Some search engines also mine
data available in databases or open directories.

6. Search Engines
Google
Yahoo
All The Web
MSN Search
Wise Nut
Alta Vista
Bing
INFOMINE
Web Ring

9. Link for a e-library to find free e-books & articles
(4,838,140 books; 75,272,582 articles for free)
https://z-lib.org/?fbclid=IwAR3ur8Ra04jzPlrQ81st7jFgl6bUSb4YJc3BJBmpspYg5GqhF_gycfrDLdw
Plus this link from NOU website: 101 Free Online Journal and Research Databases for
Academics https://www.nou.edu.np/uploads/attachments/dtxibjrmxsqd2uis.pdf

10. How Search Engines
Work?
 3 STAGES
Crawl: content is discovered
Indexing: content is analysed and stored in a database
Retrieval: user query is fetched and displayed
CRAWLING INDEXING Search Results

11. Contd …
Artificial intelligence
 Hyperlink
Spider
Spider index
Search index/ best matches
Ranking Algorithm
 Page/ Larry page algorithm

12. Categories of Search
Engines
 Crawler-based: software programs that crawl the web, e.g., Google
yahoo
 Hybrid: combination of crawler, directory results, e.g., Google &
yahoo
 Meta: combines all search engine results and compile into one
listing, e.g., Metacrawler.com, dogpile.com
 Directories: Human-edited, e.g., Yahoo directory, open directory

13. Types of Search Engines
Search Engines Types Web Address
Google Crawler-based https://www.google.co.in/
AllTheWeb Crawler-based http://www.alltheweb.com/search
AltaVista Crawler-based http://www.altavista.com/
LookSmart Human-Powered http://www.looksmart.com/
Open Directory Human-Powered http://www.looksmart.com/
Yahoo Human-Powered, crawler-based www.yahoo.com
MSN Search Human-Powered ,crawler-
based
www.mnn.com
AOL Search crawler-based www.aol.com
AskJeeves Crawler-based www.askjeeves.com/

14. Contd.
HotBot Provide crawler-based search
results
www.hotbot,com
Lycos Provide crawler-based search
results
www.lycons.in
Netscape Search Provide crawler-based search
results powered by Google
www.netscape.com
bing Crawler-based www.bing.com
Google scholar Crawler-based Scholargoogle.com

15. Types of Searching Techniques
Simple Search ( A common search through using simply a
key word)
Advanced Search ( Specific search through the author or
specific web links)
Transactional and Case Sensitivity (Searcher put a word
like social*into a search box; the computer will find that word
like socialize, sociable etc. -Truncation)
Controlled Vocabulary (The use of controlled vocabulary is
to give uniformity and consistency to the indexing of the
literature. E.g. MEDLINE)

16. Strategy/Steps of a Search:
Identify the important concepts
Choose Keywords.
Pick synonyms and related terms.
Think about Truncation and Boolean.
Choose a search engine.
Read the instruction
Enter your search expression.
Evaluate the result.
Modify/narrow your search ( if needed)
Move to new search engine (if needed)

17. Search Techniques
For the better search techniques learn how to use
Wild cards and Boolean Operators.
A Wild Card is a special character that can be
appended to the root of a word so you can search for all
possible endings to that root. e.g. *, ?
Boolean operators allow you to combine terms, to
broaden or narrow a search. e.g. “and”, “or”, “not”

18. Usage of Boolean and Wild Cards
 Asterisk * - It is useful to search all possible endings of a root.
e.g. educ* : education, educational, educating etc.
 Question Mark ? –It is useful when there are variable spellings for a word,
and you want to search for all variants at once. e.g. colo?r : color, colour
 “and” – You want to search both of the words altogether. e.g. Heart and
Disease
(+) can also be used in place of “and”
 “not” – You don’t want to search something.
e.g. Football and Cricket not Volleyball
 “or” – You want to search more than one. e.g. Drama or Theatre
 Quotation Marks “----” – You want to find words next to each other. “Wild
Flowers”

19. Search valid and
reliable information
from the e-resources!
HappyLearning!!

20. Bach, J. R., Fuller, C., Gupta, A., Hampapur, A., Horowitz, B.,
Humphrey, R., … Shu, C.-F. (1996). Virage image search engine: an open
framework for image management. In Storage and Retrieval for Still
Image and Video Databases IV (Vol. 2670, pp. 76–88). International
Society for Optics and Photonics. https://doi.org/10.1117/12.234785
Jones, K. B. (2010). Search Engine Optimization: Your visual blueprint
for effective Internet marketing (2nd ed.). Visual. Retrieved from
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=4C695CC03566EE818036C6C9241844
DB
Thelwall, M. (2008). Quantitative comparisons of search engine results. Journal
of the American Society for Information Science and Technology,
59(11), 1702–1710. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20834
Links:
1. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=776488869216523&set=gm.204607933
2098687&type=3&theater&ifg=1
2. https://z-
lib.org/?fbclid=IwAR3ur8Ra04jzPlrQ81st7jFgl6bUSb4YJc3BJBmpspYg5GqhF_gycfr
DLdw
3. https://www.nou.edu.np/uploads/attachments/dtxibjrmxsqd2uis.pdf
References

21. Any Queries---------?