Notes from Web Search Garage.
2. Other Search Engines
Other Engines
- It’s a searchable subject index (like Yahoo)
- Developed by over 60,000 volunteers
- Contains over half a million categories
- Quality of categories vary (because this is a volunteer effort)
- Boolean default is AND
- Advanced search options:
- may limit results to site listings or to categories. Example: “dallas” will pull up 42 categories instead of the over 4,000 sites that include the word “dallas”
- can enable a safe search to screen for only kid and teen-appropriate sites
- Search syntax options:
- t:title—screens for site titles only (go to WSG1 for an in-depth example)
- u:URL—screens for site URLs only (go to WSG1 for an in-depth example)
- d:description—screens for site descriptions only. For example d:animals; better for general searches, but not as useful for more specific research
- stemming is an option by using the asterisk mark after a word. For example bowl will search for bowler, bowling, etc…
- created by Matt Wells (not a corporation!)
- full-text search engine
- defaults to boolean OR
- uses a blue bar to seperate the search results containing all of your search words from the rest
- use “AND NOT” to exclude a search word. (“UofM AND NOT ross” will search for UofM but exclude any pages containing ross)
- Search syntax options:
- suburl: keyword is in the URL
- site: query is from the specified site (use the entire domain name (i.e. “umich.edu” not just edu)
- url: searches for an entire URL
- title: searches for a keyword in Web page titles
- ip: searches for results from a specified IP address. Example: “ip:39.345.63.373” most likely not very useful for academic or business research.
- link: searches for pages that link to a specified URL
- type: searches for Web pages of a specified type. Example: “type:doc” will search for word documents only
- note: (go to WSG1 for an in-depth examples of search syntax options that are missing examples)
- Look Smart and Wise Nut are owned by the same company, but both are seperate search engines
- Look Smart:
- searchable subject index
- defaults to the Boolean AND
- requires money to be listed; favors businesses who can afford to pay for search engine listings
- Wise Nut:
- full-text index
- defaults to the Boolean AND
- preference page that allows you to change results display
- limited options for advanced searching options
- allowed words
- disallowed words
- phrases
Neither search engine tell you how many pages are listed after running a search
- Ask Jeeves:
- advertised their search engine on fruit labels (completely pointless trivia…but I think its cool)
- allowed you to do a “natural language search” (i.e. Why is the sky blue?) and Jeeves tries to answer your question
- no longer uses natural language seach but has paid listings (sponsored sites)
- Teoma:
- full-text search engine
- indexes approximately a billion pages
- defaults to Boolean AND
- Advanced search options includes limiting your search to:
- page title
- URL
- domain
- geographic region
- dates
Keeping an Eye Out for new Search Engines
What to Look for in new Search Engines
- Be wary of any search engine that refuses to list sites without payment; this is only appropriate if you are shopping.
- If a search engine is requiring money for listing evaluate based on the following
- If asking for payment for placement this is not good for searching.
- If asking for payment for preferred placement this is okay if these sites are marked as sponsored listings.
- If asking for payment for more frequent indexing this can actually be good since the search engine will have fresher content.
Where to Look for new Search Engines
New search engines are popping up every day and it is important not to get used to just using the same search engine. Continue exploring and evaluating new search engines in the ever changing internet environment.
Questions
- Who are the authors of the Open Directory Project? How many are there? How does their compensation affect the overall quality of this search engine?
- I worry about my son Bobby when he hangs out with a girl name Vicky because “girls are the devil!” I don’t want him seeing anything inappropriate while using the internet. Is there a way I can make sure no adult content pops up on the screen while using www.dmoz.org?
- What corporation is Gigablast a part of? Is it a full-text search engine or a searchable subject index?
- Whenever I use www.gigablast.com there is a blue bar seperating my search results. Why is this there?
- How is “Look Smart” and “Wise Nut” related to each other?
- What is a major weakness that both “Look Smart” and “Wise Nut” have?
- I am searching for a small business. Is Look Smart a good search engine to use? Why or why not?
- When I was in middle school I didn’t understand how to ask questions on the internet without using natural language (i.e. Why is the sky blue? Is there a pot of gold under the rainbow?) What search engine would I probably have gone to when I wanted to find out the answer to a question? Can I still go to this search engine and ask using a question using natural language?
- Is “Teoma” better when looking for specific information or more general information? (Make sure you know what type of a search engine is better for specific information and which type is better for more general information!)
- Is the Open Directory Project a default and or or search engine? Gigablast? Look Smart? Wise Nut? Ask Jeeves? Teoma?
- Where did Ask Jeeves advertise at one point in time?
- Does it matter if a search engine has paid listings? What should you watch out for if it does?
- True or False? Most people who have thought about starting new search engines are too intimidated by Google and Yahoo to even try.