Search Tips Report: Information You Can Use

A monthly newsletter from Eipert Information Services

February 2004 Number 2

Search Tips Report was a free email newsletter from Eipert Information Services, featuring practical tips about business and sci/tech information sources and research strategy for you to apply in your own business. See the archive of past issues.

In This Issue

* Search strategy tip: where to start searching the Web
* Update: searching archived web sites
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Search Strategy Tip: where to start searching the Web

While Google is great, no single search engine can do it all. It's easiest and fastest just to type something into Google, but consider the effect of not finding your answer - the poor decisions made because of the lack of good information, and the time spent continuing to search.

You can greatly improve your searches just by taking a little time to think about where to start. First: the Internet is not necessarily the best place to look for an answer to your question; maybe proprietary business or science databases, the public library, or a phone call would provide what you need better and/or faster.

But when you do decide to use the Internet, where do you start? A search engine other than Google may be the place; search engines are not all created equal, and they provide different coverage and features. Other methods besides search engines should also be considered. Human-developed directories provide a different and more focused approach and the 'invisible' part of the Web should not be ignored. [See http://www.eipertinfo.com/publications/where2.htm.]

So here is my guide on where to start. It isn't the only good approach, but it's better than automatically using Google for every question.

:: Short Guide: Where to Start Searching the Web ::

** Are you looking for a specific web site that is a well-known or popular site?

This is the situation in which Google is at its best. The first result on a Google search for "tax forms" will be the IRS tax form site. Use quote marks around phrases, and try other search engines if necessary.

** Are you looking for an obscure item and having trouble finding anything at all?

Search more than one large search engine. Google, alltheweb and MSN use different large search engine databases and are good choices. Don't make the mistake of assuming that if Google can't find it, other search engines won't. (For more information see "Little overlap despite database growth!" at http://searchengineshowdown.com/stats/overlap.shtml.)

When you're having trouble finding something, try varying your search technique. Leave out extraneous words. Try searching phrases with and without quote marks.

** Does your search term have many meanings, and you're having trouble narrowing the search results to what you want?

Use quote marks around phrases.

Try http://www.vivisimo.com for its categorization. The 'Clustered results' section of search results at Vivisimo categorizes your search results by general topics, and can limit your browsing to one or more specific categories. This is not a perfect technology, but can help where there really are different meanings. If you search "mariners", the clusters returned include Seattle (the Seattle Mariners), Museum (various mariners' museums) and some clusters that lead to information about real mariners (Master Mariners, Notice to Mariners, and Fishing Boat).

For another interesting post-search feature that helps narrow your results to relevant items, try http://www.teoma.com. Following a search on Teoma, note the links called "Resources: link collections from experts and enthusiasts"; they point to pages that are likely to have collections of links from authoritative sources.

** Do you want to find a commercial or shopping site?

Try the Yahoo directory at http://directory.yahoo.com.

** Do you want information about an academic topic?

Try the Librarians' Index to the Internet at http://lii.org.

** Do you need authoritative information on a specific subject?

Use a niche or subject-specific search engine that will search only the portion of the Web that you care about, including Invisible Web sites. One example is Lawcrawler (http://lawcrawler.findlaw.com), which searches legal web sites and databases on the web as well as their own site. Once you've found a useful subject specific search site, such as Lawcrawler, bookmark it and go there directly for similar questions in the future rather than starting with Google.

How do you find a niche search site in the first place? Try the following: The Invisible Web Directory (http://invisible-web.net), Profusion (http://www.profusion.com), Search Engine Guide (http://www.searchengineguide.com/searchengines.html) and Search Engine Colossus (http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/).

The Yahoo and LII directories listed above, as well as http://directory.google.com, often will lead to subject-specific search sites.

** Are you looking for breaking news?

Use a news site rather than a general-purpose search engine. It's easiest to use the tab called "News" available at most search engines, but try some other news sites with more coverage such as RocketNews (http://www.rocketnews.com) and NewsNow (http://www.newsnow.co.uk). Try the detailed search form at http://search.news.yahoo.com/usns/ynsearch/categories/advanced/index.html.

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*** Contact Sue Eipert (seipert@eipertinfo.com) at Eipert Information Services for customized research of proprietary business and sci/tech databases, as well as the Internet, for marketing, R&D, strategic planning or litigation support. ***

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Update: searching archived web sites
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Last month's Search Tips Report newsletter, at http://www.eipertinfo.com/newsletter/newsletter2004-01.htm, discussed the business reasons for searching archived web sites using the Google cache and the Wayback Machine.

More ways to search old information:

* Following a search on Gigablast, two choices within each result are "archived copy" (leading to Gigablast's cached copy, including the date it was cached), and "older copies", (leading directly to the list of older copies on the Wayback Machine).
* For a different slant on old information, check out old Internet conversations from 1981 (before the Web) at the Google 20 Year Usenet Timeline at http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html. Google has recently completed integrating the historical Usenet information into Google Groups. Search Usenet conversions from the past 23 years at http://groups.google.com.

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