1. TIPS ANDSTRATEGIESFOR EFFECTIVEWEBSEARCHINGGwen Harris(March 26, 2012)

2. AGENDA EAC - TORONTO1. thinking persons approach to search2. 5 features to make you a power Google user3. 3 methods to get good results faster4. a few alternative search engines 3. THINKING FIRST 4. WORDS MATTER Order of words makes a difference in resultsranking. Natural phrasing is better because ... A rare term finds rare items, scientific termsfind scientific papers, medical legal ... Context words will disambiguate the meaning. Stock terms identify the type of document youwant. What do you expect from the words you use? 5. CONCEPTS MATTER Primary / dominant concept what is yourcore topic? Secondary concept what modifies or supportsthe core topic? What do you want to knowabout it? Does anything connect these concepts? Work outwards flex one concept at a time add another concept to refine. 6. EXAMPLE 1 SMART METERS Question: Is the electromagnetic field (EMF) from smart meters hazardous to health?Primary: smartmeters electricity Secondary: healthhazards, effects electromagnetic 7. EXAMPLE 1 - QUERIES Most important first: smart meters electricity health hazards Natural phrasing: health hazards of smart meters for electricity First 10 results: top 2 are the same, 2 are unique for each set, and ranking is different. 8. EXAMPLE 2 BICYCLE PATHS Question: Do bicycle paths or lanes have any influence on cycling rates?Primary: bicycle Secondary:ridership, cycling bicycle/bike pathsrate, cycling growth and lanesIncrease 9. EXAMPLE 2 - QUERIES Capture concepts: increase bicycle ridership using bike lanes and paths Add stock term: statistics bicycle ridership using bike lanes and paths 10. QUOTING A STUDENT Once you have identified (at least provisionally) the primary and secondary concepts involved in a search you are in a position to do two things: you can manipulate the words you are using to search for the concepts and you can apply other strategies to focus on particular instances of the concepts. 11. 5 FEATURES AT GOOGLE 12. RELATED WORDS AT GOOGLE 13. RELATED WORDS AND MATCHING 14. TIPS ON USING RELATED WORDS All search engines do word variants to somedegree. But Google is best at it. Engine retrieves and ranks results with theexpanded word set. Watch for bolded words you may not wantsome. Think about the words there may be anotheryou want to use eg preparedness. 15. TURN RELATED WORDS OFF Google put word insidequotation marks. Egpreparation Google use Verbatim Bing and Yahoo put + infront. Eg +preparation 16. 5 UNIQUE FEATURES TO GOOGLE1. Highly semantic as we have seen2. Tilde ~ the synonym operator3. * as wildcard and proximity operator4. Number range5. Judge a page by its images 17. GOOGLE: ~ THE FUZZY OPERATOR 18. * AS FILL-IN-BLANK 19. * AS WILDCARD BETWEEN WORDS 20. GOOGLE NUMBER RANGE NUM..NUM 21. JUDGE A PAGE BY ITS IMAGES 22. ALSO PAGE PREVIEW 23. USING OR Why: to expand a concept. When: after you have a sense of the searchresults and have identified important words toexpress the concept. How: one concept at a time, and just 2 or 3terms that pertain to that concept. 24. PREPARE OR PLAN 25. COMPOUND A CONCEPT 26. 3 METHODS FOR BETTERRESULTS 27. REFINE YOUR SEARCH1. What words would be in the perfect page title?2. Who would have information about this?3. What format would it be in? 28. TITLE TAG Format intitle: Question: preparing for climate change in ontarioPrimary: climate Secondary:changepreparations,planning,adaptationOntario 29. INTITLE:CLIMATE CHANGE 30. ADD INTITLE:ONTARIO 31. CHANGE FOCUS 32. WHO WILL HAVE IT? Do you want Canadian? Use the .ca countrycode site:ca What does the Ministry of Natural Resourceshave? Use site:mnr.gov.on.ca 33. MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES 34. WHAT FORMAT? Use filetype: to ask for particular format. pdf used universally to publish reports,brochures, papers ppt and pps for presentations doc word documents Xls for spreadsheet 35. LIMIT TO PDF 36. ALTERNATIVES TO GOOGLE 37. ALTERNATIVE ENGINES Duckduckgo ensures privacy, no spam Blekko slashtag, no spam Carrot2.org metasearch and clusters results Allplus.com metasearch and clusters results Topsy social media 38. DUCKDUCKGO 39. DUCKDUCKGO Full privacy no Smaller database tracking or sharinguses own Has Canadian crawl, Blekko, Bingcontent. Generally higherquality blocksspam. Duckduckgo.com Syntax for intitle,site, filetype. Search suggestions 40. BLEKKO SLASHTAG ENGINE 41. BLEKKO Avoids content farms Smaller 3 billion no span Bans some good Sites handpicked andsitescategorized Weak on Canadian Slashtags signify the content.category Takes time to learn Create your own Less syntax doestopicshave site:Blekko.com 42. CARROT2 - CLUSTERING 43. CARROT2.ORG Meta-search of Only brings back 100Google, Bing, Yahoo, results.Ask Clusters results can see aspects oftopic Visual display - maps Carrot2.org Good for firstsearch, broad sweep. 44. ALLPLUS - CLUSTERING 45. ALLPLUS Metasearch Clusters derived fromGoogle, Bingfrequently occurring Clusters more phrase.granular Small number of Universal images, resultsvideo, news, twitter,blogs Good for first sweep. Allplus.com 46. TOPSY SOCIAL MEDIA 47. TOPSY.COM Indexes social media As with all social Feeds frommedia, readerTwitter, Facebook, Go beware.ogle-Plus, Youtubeetc. Uses influencealgorithms to identifyTopsy.comimportance Provides buzz 48. THANK YOU Questions? Internet News Blog http://www.websearchguide.ca/netblog/ Web Search Courses at iSchool Institute 1-day classroom, and 6-week online Email goharris@websearchguide.ca