Personalisation of Search - ADDENDUM

ADDENDUMPersonalisation of search: take back control

Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services5th June 2012

Pre-conference workshop, 11th Southern African Online Information Meeting, Sandton Convention Centre

Slides are available at http://www.rba.co.uk/as/

[email protected]

Twitter: @karenblakeman

http://www.rba.co.uk/

This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

The following slides are answers to some of the questions that arose during the workshop at SAOIM on June 5th. If I have missed any significant ones or you have suddenly thought of a question email me at [email protected] and I will update the slides.

11/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 2

Google Advanced Search screen has a box for "all these words". Does this force Google to look for all of your search terms?

Unfortunately it doesn't. Google still follows the approach as described by Dan Russell in a response to one of my blog postings.

“....it’s clear that people will often write long queries (with anywhere from 5 to 10 terms) for which there are no results. Google will then selectively remove the terms that are the lowest frequency to give you some results (rather than none)....Soft AND is a way to reduce the overall frustration and give the searcher something to examine (and with luck, a chance to reformulate their query).”http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/08/dear-google-stop-messing-with-my-search/#comments

The only way to force Google to look for all of your words is to use the Verbatim option in the left hand menu on the results page


Does Google Scholar use the same search techniques as Google's main web search?

Google Scholar has its own Advanced Search screen and still appears to look for all of your search terms in your documents. You can also still use the +sign before a word to force an exact match search, and the cached copy of the article still highlights the search terms within the document (no longer available with web search).

When ranking documents Google Scholar looks at where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.


I can't find the H-Index for one of our academics inGoogle Scholar

For Google Scholar to calculate an H-index for an author, the author has to set up a profile within Google Scholar and "claim" their papers. If they have done so their name in the search results will be obviously hyperlinked and you will be able to click through to their profile and see the H-index.


Example of Google Scholar author profile and H-index


Where has Google Scholar Advanced Search Gone?

It's hidden under the little arrow in the search box (It took me a while to find it!)


Is Mendeley useful for finding quality papers?

Mendeley.com enables researchers collaborate and organise bookmarks and copies of articles that are being used as part of their research or included in a publication. It also enables the creation of bibliographies and offers citation styles for over a 1000 journals.

When using Mendeley as a research tool remember that it is not comprehensive. As well as acting as a quality filter mechanism it is very useful in tracking down related research or similar articles thus expanding your search, and is a good way of identifying experts on a subject.


I'm having problems with Blekko's slashtags – I can't seem to find mine nowFor those who have never used Blekko.com's slashtags, these are a way of setting up a custom search engine. You create a title for your slashtag and them add the sites that you would like to be searched when using it. You have to be signed in to create and save a slashtag.

If you are not signed in to Blekko when using your slashtag you will have to include your user name as part of the slashtag, for example

wind turbines karenblakeman/renewable

This assumes that you have made the slash tag public. If you have kept it private then you will have to be signed in to Blekko to use it.

If you are signed in and it is your slashtag then the search would be wind turbines /renewable

The problem could be that you are not signed in and your slashtag is private or you may have forgotten your username and slashtag title.


I'm going mad with all the changes in search and I have to prepare training materials for students. Is there an easy way to keep up?

Even if you keep up with all the changes, what you see on your screen will not be what they see on theirs. It's important that they know how results can be changed by previous searches and social network activity, and whether or not one is signed in to a network. Then show them some of the tricks we covered in the session that can "depersonalise" search results (although personalisation is not always bad).

As for keeping up with what is going on try following Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/ and Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/. Although they concentrate on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) they watch the search engines and social networks like hawks and are often the first to notice major changes that Google, for example, forgets to tell us about!


Technology

Personalisation of Search - ADDENDUM