| List produced by UKeiG workshop participants,
compiled and edited by Karen Blakeman
karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk
web: http://www.rba.co.uk/
blog: http://www.rba.co.uk/rss/blog.htm
At the end of the UKeiG advanced search workshop, Google
and Beyond, the participants are asked to come up with a collective
top search tips. These can be search tools, specific web sites
or search techniques. This is what the group who attended
the workshop on October 14th, 2005 came up with:
- Use three or four different search engines for a comprehensive
search, spend time getting to know how they work and discover
their unique features.
- Use file format options to narrow down your search. For
example limit to ppt for presentations/conference papers,
xls for tables of data, doc or pdf for industry or market
reports. (Use the pull down menus in the Advanced Search
screens of most search tools).
- Use the synonym option in Google. Precede your terms with
a tilde (~) and Google will look for synonyms of your terms.
- Use http://ranking.thumbshots.com/
to compare the first hundred results of two search engines
(for example Yahoo vs Google, Teoma vs MSN). This will show
the degree of overlap, or lack of it. Very useful when trying
to convince a colleague or student that they should use
more than one search tool.
- Dogpile http://www.dogpile.com/
– recently revamped meta search tool (runs your query in
several search tools at once) that covers MSN, Yahoo, Google
and Ask Jeeves. It also has a feature that enables you to
display the results from the individual search engines side
by side and highlights the unique results.
- Try out Exalead http://www.exalead.com/
for its phonetic and approximate spelling search (Advanced
Search screen).
- Increase the number of results displayed on your results
page from the default to 100. (In most search tools, usually
found under the preferences link.)
- Increase the weighting of your most important search term
by repeating it several times. For example 'beer market
share France Belgium Czech' and 'beer market share France
Belgium Czech Czech Czech' give different results. Works
in Google, Yahoo and Exalead.
- Check out the Advanced Search of your favourite search
engine and find out how to use each of the features more
effectively.
- Trovando http://www.trovando.it/
– an interface to dozens of search tools organized by type,
for example web, images, news, blogs, reference. Type in
your search just once and then click on the link to each
search tool in turn. Quick way of running your search in
several different types of engines.
- Try “reference” tools such as Wikipedia, Answers.com,
FindArticles, Scirus, Google Print. Use the Reference tab
in Trovando http://www.trovando.it/
for a list of resources.
- Blogs aren't always nerdish! There are some good applications
and there are good authoritative blogs and RSS feeds on
a wide range of subjects. Search by using the RSS/XML file
type option in the Advanced Search of Yahoo, the 'words
in blog title' Advanced Search option in http://www.google.com/blogsearch
or look for the blogroll on a relevant blog that you
already know and trust.
PDF of Top Search Tips and Tricks
Factsheet (21 KB)
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