Going Beyond Google

Going Beyond Google
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading
Magazine for Information
Professionals
Agenda
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Googlization of Online
Other Web Search Engines
Search Syntax
Compare with Traditional Online
What We Can Expect in the Future
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What Does Online Mean
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Librarians were the early adopters of
online technology
“Our” online predates the Internet and
the personal computer
So why don’t our users know about
our online search skills?
We have got to show we’re better
than Google
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Out Googling
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We need to Out Google Google
Prove our worth
Make libraries, information centers,
and information professionals relevant
both in reality and in the eyes of our
users and those who fund us
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Googlization of Online
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Online = Search =
Google
John Battelle’s book
But search engines
don’t do what
libraries do
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Into the GYM
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Google
– Still the most popular search engine
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Yahoo!
– Gaining on Google
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MSN (now Live Search)
– Love them or hate them, it’s Microsoft
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Important Alternatives
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Ask (Jeeves retired)
– Now owned by Barry Diller (IAC)
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Exalead
– Developed in France, now has US office
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A9
– Part of Amazon
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Gigablast
– Added blog search
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Whatever Happened To..
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AltaVista
AllTheWeb
WiseNut
Teoma
Northern Light
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Non-English Search
Engines
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Search Engine Colossus
– Canadian
– http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/
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Phil Bradley
– British
– http://www.philb.com/countryse.htm
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Vertical Search Engines
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FirstGov.gov
Answers.com
Scopus.com, Scirus.com
Topix.net
Oodle.com
GlobalSpec.com
GYM verticals
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Metasearch Engines
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Vivisimo (now Clusty.com)
– Cluster technology
– Creating verticals
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Dogpile
– Infospace
– GYMA
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Mamma.com
Trovando.it
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Vertical Metasearch
Engines
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Kayak
Clusty
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Visual Search
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Groxis’ Grokker
– EBSCO
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Kartoo
Touchgraph
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Search Syntax
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Implied Boolean AND
OR
Minus sign for NOT
Exact phrase
NEAR
Intervening words
Prefixes
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Field Searching
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Advanced search boxes
Look at syntax and put into search box
Limitations to field searching
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Going Beyond Google At
Google
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Advanced search
Tabs (only they aren’t tabs anymore)
Clicking on More
Synonym feature not working properly
Link feature not robust
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Going Beyond Google with
Other Search Engines
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Each search engine has a different
database
Good ways to compare:
– Twingine.com
– Jux2.com
– Thumbshots (ranking.thumbshots.org)
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Not everything is on the Internet
Not everything can be found via Web
search engines
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What Else Web Search
Engines Do
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Localization (competition with Yellow
Pages?)
Personalization (does this work for
libraries?)
Numeric (calculations, U.S. phone numbers)
Shortcuts (flights, package tracking)
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More Offerings from
Search Engines
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Doodles & Jokes (particularly Google,
but Yahoo has a sense of humor)
News, Alerting (Yahoo, Google)
Books (find in a library) (Google,
Yahoo)
Scholarly Literature (Google, MSN)
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Search Engine or Portal?
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Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
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Going Beyond Web
Search
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The hidden Web is not as hidden as it
used to be
Lots more formats than HTML
Moving into blogs, audio, video,
images
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Blogs
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Personal opinions, diaries, essays,
news analysis
Blog search engines:
– Technorati, Ice Rocket
– Blogger, Bloglines
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Added to Yahoo News Search, then
removed
No search engine is complete
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Tags
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User-supplied “indexing”
Folksonomies
Can be easily searched at Technorati
Inconsistent, uncontrolled
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Podcasts
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Listening in to information
Podcast search engines:
– Podzinger, Podscope, Singingfish,
Podcastalley
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How do they search?
Often better to go directly to the
source
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Video Search
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Google and Yahoo are experimenting
with video (YouTube acquisition)
– Letting users upload their own
– Social networking model at other sites
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Singingfish
Blinkx
How they search: metadata or speech
recognition
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Search Engine
Optimization
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Manipulating search results
Organic
How does this affect search results
How do paid search results display
Do end users understand
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Traditional Online Search
Engines
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EBSCOhost
ProQuest
Factiva
Nexis
Dialog
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EBSCOhost
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Visualization
Clustering
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Factiva
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Tag clouds
Graphs
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Online 2.0? Or 3.0?
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How are traditional engines evolving?
Clustered results
Visualization, “delisting”
Making data work harder
Ending “siloization”
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The Future
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Is always hard to predict
Will Google continue to be
synonymous with search?
Will Yahoo! catch up?
Will Ask join the gym?
Where do libraries and librarians fit?
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Contact Details
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Marydee Ojala
[email protected]
www.onlinemag.net
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