Search Yahoo! With Boolean Operators

AND, OR, (), “”, NOT, Domain:

Search Engine Coverage Comparison - I

Common Search Engines – Misconceptions Search Engines index all available content on

the web They all work in roughly the same way and they

all deliver similar results

If this is true – what is the likelihood that asite will show up on the first page (top 10)of results of all 4 major search providers?

Search Engine Coverage Comparison - 2 1.1 %

The study looked at search results from12,570 random queries on Ask, Google,MSN search and Yahoo which suggeststhat each of the four major search engineshas a unique ranking approach of findingsnot duplicated by the other searchengines.

Info from “A study of Results Overlap and Uniqueness Among Major Web Search Engines” by Spink, Jansen, Blakely, and Koshman published in Information jProcessing and Management (2006)

Search Engine Coverage Comparison - 3

http://ranking.thumbshots.com/ Searched “Virtual Reality” in Google

vs. Yahoo.

Results Dots=web sites Blue Dots=web sites both engines have

in common

Search Engine Features Chart

http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/features/

Search engines provide different search techniques, different limits, and etc.

Why Boolean Operators?

Limitations of natural language process (NLP), i.e, “who is John Kerry” does not always work

AND & “” (quotations)

Virtual Reality Medical Training -> Without any Boolean operator =

6,200,00 hits

"Virtual Reality" AND "Medical Training" -> 70,300 hits

OR, “”, (), adding more keywords

("Virtual Reality" OR Simulation) AND “Medical Training” -> 268,000 hits—this number is larger again because we added a synonym

NOTE: no need to enclose a single word with quotation mark (“ ”)

("Virtual Reality" OR Simulation) AND (Medical OR Surgical) AND Training

-> 1,210,000 hits—this number grew because we added another synonym

More Keywords

Combining keywords with special keywords above

("Virtual Reality" OR Simulation) AND “Medical Training” AND (benefits OR advantages) -> 73,500 hits

application case studies examples implementation

reviews analysis models illustrations

benefits advantages disadvantages liabilities

Domain: ("Virtual Reality" OR Simulation) AND

“Medical Training” AND (benefits OR advantages) AND domain:com ->18,500 hits

("Virtual Reality" OR Simulation) AND “Medical Training” AND (benefits OR advantages) AND domain:org ->11,300 hits(other domains, .com, .org, .gov, and .edu)