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Alternatives to Google for searching. Presentation given as part of the Web Search Academy, pre conference workshop at Internet Librarian International, 26th October 2011
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Web Search AcademyInternet Librarian International
26th October 2011
Alternative Search Tools
Karen Blakeman
http://www.rba.co.uk/
Twitter: @karenblakeman
11/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 1
Why not Google?
• Google mangling your search– correcting correct search terms
– weird automatic synonym searching
– not searching for all of your terms
– “personalisation”
• Best results may be at the bottom of your results list– other search tools rank and order documents in different ways
• Google can’t look inside databases or password protected areas
• Specialist information requires specialist tools
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Bing and Yahoo
• Yahoo now uses Bing’s database and ranking algorithms for most country versions
• Many of the Advanced Search commands are similar to Google’s – see Search Tools Summary and Comparison
http://www.rba.co.uk/search/compare.shtml
• Bing advanced search screen minimalist - use commands– detailed list at Advanced Operator Reference
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff795620.aspx (some no longer work)
• Also beware – “Bing Adds Adaptive Search, Customized by Your Search History - Search Engine Watch”– http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2109647/Bing-Adds-Adapti
ve-Search-Customized-by-Your-Search-History
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Bing and Yahoo
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Bing and Yahoo starting to behave like Google and automatically “correcting” what they think are mistakes
Need to prefix terms with + signs or use “..” around terms to force exact match (Google now only allows “..”)
Bing
• Most of the interesting developments and features are only available in the US version
• Results tend to be more consumer/retail focused unless using advanced search features
• Coverage not identical to Google’s - sometimes yields important unique content, especially in research and business
• Often more up to date than Google
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Bing Maps
• http://www.bing.com/maps/– “Classic”
• http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/– uses Sliverlight
– more interactive
– automatically changes type of view as you zoom in
• Multimap, Birdseye, Aerial, Streetside (not available for all towns or countries), Ordnance Survey Map view
• “After Little Resistance in Germany, Bing Expands Streetside Photos Across Europe”–
http://searchengineland.com/after-little-resistance-in-germany-bing-expands-streetside-photos-across-europe-96351
• Often has problems finding correct location or finding anything at all– have to try various combinations of terms e.g. Portsmouth Central
Library instead of just Portsmouth Library11/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 6
Bing Maps
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??
Exalead
• http://www.exalead.com/search/
• Demonstration for their enterprise search
• Small database
• Frequency of update?
• Has NEAR/n command for proximity searching
• Link command that actually works
• Supports full Boolean
• filetype, site, intitle, inurl
• But phonetic and approximate spelling unreliable
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DuckDuckGo
• http://duckduckgo.com/
• No tracking, no “filter bubble”
• site: inbody: intitle: filetype:
• sort:date to sort by date (uses results from Blekko)
• region:cc (e.g. de) to boost a country
• Syntax and keyboard shortcuts at http://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html
• Maths, conversions, programming syntax and shortcuts http://duckduckgo.com/tech.html– answer at top of results usually from Wolfram Alpha
• !bang commands https://duckduckgo.com/bang.html
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Blekko
• http://blekko.com/
• slashtags for sorting by date (/date), searching for images (/images) and videos (/videos)
• Use public slashtags to search a group of web sites covering a particular topic or type of site e.g. /library
• Or create your own to search your specified list of sites (similar to Google Custom Search Engines)– wind turbine electricity generation /karenblakeman/renewable
• “Musings about librarianship: Using Blekko to search across thousands of library sites” http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2010/11/using-blekko-to-search-across-thousands.html
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Blekko
• Does not always search for all of your terms
• Cannot do filetype, inurl, intitle searches
• Drop down menu next to page in results list for– site search (or use /site)
– similar pages (or use /similar)
– inbound links to the page (or use /links)
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Wolfram Alpha http://www.wolframalpha.com/
• “Computational Knowledge Engine”
• Very good for calculations and conversions
• Assumes your location from your IP address
• Available features and search options change depending on your location
• Have to ask the question in the right way
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Wolfram alpha
• Curated data and information
• Can be very out of date
• Sometimes totally wrong!
• No reference to original source - only a list that is intended as a guide to further sources of information
11/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 13
Google Scholar
• A useful place to start your research or if you are looking for a specific paper but.....
• No source list, not comprehensive and omits many key scientific publications
• Both peer-reviewed and un-reviewed articles, pre-prints, institutional repositories, references to books, citations
• Does not use publishers’ meta data• Author search unreliable, search on year of publication
unreliable• Sometimes does weird things with your search terms• Peter Jasco - Google Scholar's Ghost Authors, Lost
Authors, and Other Problems http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6698580.html
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Microsoft Academic Search
• http://academic.research.microsoft.com/
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Microsoft Academic Search
• Problems– coverage– sometimes gets the author completely wrong
• “Will the Real Scott Wilson Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up”–
http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/will-the-real-scott-wilson-please-stand-up-please-stand-up/
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M Edwards should be Martin Edwards not Maria-Benedicta Edwards
COnnecting REpositories - CORE
• http://core.kmi.open.ac.uk/
• “UK’s first open access full-text search engine to aid research JISC” http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2011/09/openaccess.aspx
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Selected specialist tools - URLs
• http://www.chemspider.com/
• http://biznar.com/
• http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/
• http://philpapers.org/
• http://www.mednar.com/
• http://www.scirus.com/
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
• http://www.healthmash.com/
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Selected specialist tools
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And a few more ....
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Yahoo Finance
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Google can seriously damage your news
• Experiment by Mary Ellen Bates
• Is Google really filtering my news? - Librarian of Fortune
– http://www.librarianoffortune.com/librarian_of_fortune/2011/09/is-google-really-filtering-my-news.html
• Highlights
– More than 25% of stories showed up in only one searcher’s
results
– Almost one in five searchers saw a story that no one else saw
– Only 12% of searchers saw the same 3 stories in the same order
• And it’s about to get worse – “Google News Launches "Standout" Tag
for Featured Content” http://searchengineland.com/google-news-
launches-standout-tag-for-featured-content-94256
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News - Silobreaker.com
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Silobreaker - networks
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Can change the emphasis using the slider bars
Statistics http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/
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The Guardian
Guardian data store - data journalism and data visualizationhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/data
Data and analysis on topics that are in the news, links to the original datasets are provided
Guardian World Government Data
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data
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Zanran
• http://www.zanran.com/
• “Zanran – a new data search engine”– http://awareci.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/zanran-a-new-data-
search-engine/
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Want to explore other stuff? Zuula.com
• Type in your search once and work your way through the search tools
• Can edit search tools order and remove unwanted ones
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Suffering Google withdrawal symptoms?
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Decide which sites you want to search and design your own Google custom search engine
Create your own search engine without Google
• Blekko.com– Create a slashtag
– Musings about librarianship: Using Blekko to search across thousands of library sites
– http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2010/11/using-blekko-to-search-across-thousands.html
• Gigablast Custom Topic Search – http://gigablast.com/cts.html
– up to 500 sites
• Rollyo.com– powered by Yahoo
– maximum of 25 sites per Searchroll
– doesn’t work for me most of the time
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