Focus on Search Engines and Web Sites

Search Engine/Tool

I started off trying Exalead but did not get very far...everything that I entered basically sent me to other web sites, mainly Google or Yahoo! I had the same results with Duck Duck Go. (After spending about an hour looking at the other pages, I came back to Exalead and tried again. I found the following only after I quit trying the search bar and clicked on the Advanced Search button off to the right of the search bar. I went back to Duck Duck Go and Quintura, but they did not have this search button)

What are you looking for?

• Exact Phrases e.g. "to be or not to be"
• Exact Words e.g. +the godfather
• Optional Terms e.g. cow OPT mad
• Exclude Terms e.g. star -movie
• Proximity Search e.g. movie NEXT star
• Logic e.g. (movie AND star) OR (famous AND people)
• Phonetic Search e.g. soundslike:shakespear
• Approximate spelling Search e.g. spellslike:exlaead
• Choose a language    e.g. movie star language:en

Where do you want to find it?

• Site Search e.g. movie star site:flickr.com
• Title Search e.g. intitle:"official website"
• URL Search e.g. inurl:music
• Link Search e.g. link:www.exalead.com

In which period of time are you interested?

• Search Before a Date e.g. movie star before:2004/05/21
• Search After a Date e.g. movie star after:2004/05/21 

 Exalead seems like it would be a worthwhile investment of my time. 
1) By using the advanced search button, the site gives you direction within the search bar. This is a lot different from the popular websites in that you have to know the format first for the searches on their pages.
2) I also like that there are a lot of options to help you search, such as phonetic search and search by date.
3) You can choose the language to search results by. You get returns for pages that are only in that language (mostly)
4) Across the top of the search bar are buttons that allow you to search within Wikipedia, Images, Web or Videos. If you choose one of those buttons, it does limit your search options that are shown above, but it only returns those specific sites.
5) The site allows you to add a bookmark.(I am not sure of this function) 
I think that I will use this on my next paper as it gives me a bit more control and I am interested to see how it stacks up against Google and Yahoo! I like that the site gives you prompts to help you to define your search without having to know Boolean. Even though I understand the concept, sometimes it is time consuming to think of all the different ways you need to search and the different ways you need to enter words. This tool would be useful in the design stages of your research. It would allow you to get more generalized information and to collect ideas to direct your research.

Quintura was interesting in that it had what they call a tag cloud...the main subjects to search were "floating" underneath the search bar and if you clicked on one of them it would take you to the list of sites to choose from. The CEO thinks it is a revolutionary way to search as " most people just want Boolean running in the background" and they do not want to learn the intricacies of searching. I think that the kids search was especially brilliant in that they only offer the kids sites that have been content filtered and offer safe browsing. The biggest problem with Quintura is that it is primarily in Russian. Even when they have English, they have a Russian language "enter" button and you have to guess to enter the page.

Google and Yahoo support their own pages that offer help and suggestions. I could not find these corresponding pages in the off-use engines.


Lycos
The site itself did not offer any suggestions for searching, no matter how many ways I phrased it. I don't know if I am doing something wrong...I finally wrote Lycos search tips and was given several choices to direct me to other sites that offered advice and I chose http://www.unm.edu/~brosen/search/lycos.htm. The following is the only writing that was on the page:

• Comprehensive--good for obscure topics.
  
• Does not allow exact phrase searching.
  
• Can use "and," and "or" (the default). Can match 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 terms.
  
• Use the "-" symbol to create a "not" search.
  
• Automatically truncates a word, for example, bank will retrieve banks, banking, bankers, etc. Use a period after the search term to retrieve an exact match, for example, bank. will retrieve only documents with the word "bank".

I typed in Lycos search operators and was given a list of sites including http://websearch.about.com/od/enginesanddirectories/a/lycos.htm
which gave the advice to be as specific as possible in the search terms. It also had a link to http://websearch.about.com/od/internetresearch/a/boolean.htm
that listed boolean terms in general.  About.com also commented that Lycos "has evolved from providing its own search results to piggybacking on Ask.com." The author at About.com continues on to say that "Lycos is more of a content hub than a search engine destination. This is not to say that you can't find things using Lycos; but that your time at Lycos probably would be better spent utilizing their fun features (Lycos 50, Lycos Entertainment, etc.)"



Metasearch tool 

I chose Yippy from the tools page, but it came up with its old name: Clusty. I entered Chihuahua and got results that look a lot like when I enter a search on Google.
1)The thing that is most different is that Yippy has topics or divisions for the subject of your search so that you can narrow to specific searches such as if you only wanted pictures or info about breeders. In Google, you have to look through all the listings to search out the specifics.
2)There is also an advanced search tool much like on Google that allows ease of searching in that you don't have to enter Boolean.
3) I like that there is a dictionary definition at the top of the page.
4) If you click on details, Yippy gives you the sources where they got all their information...That is really interesting and they have a link to each of the sources so you can go directly to it.
5) One more really cool feature is the choices along the top bar. The news tab will give you results from news stories that have your search subject in them; the same with the other tabs like maps and jobs (shows you job offers that specifically mention your search term.)
I then went to Yippy and was given the same page as Clusty, but with the Yippy tag at the top...very interesting. They are operating two pages with the same information returned just different company names at the top.
I like this tool and will definitely use it the next time I am working on a paper, I will be able to refine my results and it will eliminate looking through so many returns (like what I get on Google) Even though I have been using Boolean terms for searches, Google is not real friendly with this method. I have been trying out different engines like Chrome. Boolean seems to work the best with the school library and the results are more suited for academic research. When you know what you are looking for, this is the best tool to use so that you can get more direct results.

Subject Directories/Virtual Libraries

Eduframe seemed interesting: but, just like the introduction warned, it is hard to use. I like that these tools are more targeted information than I would get from the other two search tools (and, by design, probably a lot more accurate) My search felt more personal and directed me to the information that I needed without having to filter through a bunch of unneeded sites.  
1) This is a useful tool in that it puts a bunch of resources together. If you were looking only in Google, you may not know what to look for. This gives you several choices that you may overlook using other, more popular resources.  I don't necessarily agree with some of the group headings, you need to really play with this site if you are going to use it for a research paper.
2) There is contact information on the first page, you don't have to go searching. I think that is because the editor wants input from his users. I wonder how open he is to suggestions and it he makes any changes based on these inputs, even though it shows there have been no changes since 2007? I did find that the links he uses are kept up-to-date with relevant dates and information. (for example; a job site for actresses and actors in the career section)
3) Under EDU2, for example, there is a search function and a helper link that give you more information. This is not available for all the subjects. Some of the subjects have an "add a link" button.
4) I  breaks down the categories into much smaller bites that get you more direct information. But you need to spend quite a bit of time looking through all the titles and playing around with the links to find what you need.
5) There is a page that gives you links to contacts such as blogs, registries and forums where you can communicate with others that have your interests.
 This is a resource that I will most certainly use as I found many sites and references for archaeology. I have not found this many using Google. I am really excited about finding this and it was purely luck that I chose this tool to look at. I am going to look at the other subject directories to see what else I can find!