Super Searcher

SUPER SEARCHER: ENHANCING YOUR ONLINE SEARCH SUPER POWERS

Max C AndersonTechnology CoordinatorNational Network of Libraries of MedicineGreater Midwest Region

Agenda

Search engines & results The Invisible Web Academic search options Searching for historical and cached web

pages Media searching (images, videos, books

and more) Searching 2.0 Resources

Where Searching Begins

“The Pew Internet Project has found that search engines are the most popular way to locate a variety of types of information online – including health information, government information, and religious information.” (Pew Internet and American Life Project. Memo: Search Engines. 2002)

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2002/Search-Engines/Data-Memo.aspx

Search Engine Popularity

“Some 84% of adult Internet users, about 108 million Americans, have used search engines to help them find information on the Web.” (Pew Internet and American Life Project. Search Engine Users. 2005)

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2005/Search-Engine-Users.aspx

Results provided by Nielsen Online reports for January 2010. Based on a total of 10,272,099 total searches (U.S. only).

Top 10 Search Providers

Where do you search?

Google Yahoo! Bing Ask.com Others?

Search Engines Galore!

Spider Power

Computer programs called web crawlers (aka: spiders and bots) browse the Web for information to add to a search engine.

Formula for Success

Complex and often secret algorithms determine which parts of the Web will be searched.

Result Overload

Results are ranked based on several factors (determined by the search algorithm).

Beware of information overload.

Search Engine Taste Test

http://blindsearch.fejus.com/

Google Results Tools

Basic search: http://www.google.

com

Google provides tools to narrow your results.

Advanced Search Features

Google Search

http://www.google.com

Yahoo! Search

http://www.yahoo.com/ vs http://search.yahoo.com/

Bing Search

http://www.bing.com

Exercise I

Test your skills Use the handout provided to work on practice exercises

More Things Great & Google

Google offers a variety of other search options including: http://directory.google.com

/ http://www.google.com/pat

ents http://www.google.com/pro

ducts

Rev Your Search Engine

Pop the hood and take a look around the search engine.

Exercise 2

What do we really know about the company? Use the handout provided to work in small

groups to discover more about a search site

15 Minute Break

The Invisible Web

Search engines cover less than 20% of the entire Web.

The “Deep Web”

Scholarly Pursuits

Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/

WolframAlpha http://www.wolframalpha.

com/

Blast from the Past

Wayback machine http://www.archive.org/

CyberCemetery http://govinfo.library.unt.edu

Google Cache http://www.google.com Search using cache:URL

Exercise 3

Test your skills Use the handout provided to work on practice exercises

Media Searching

What types of media are commonly searched for? Books/Print Images Video

Books/Print Search

Google Book Search http://books.google.

com/

Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg

.org/wiki/Main_Page

Image Search

Google Images http://www.google.

com

Picture This

Flickr http://www.flickr.co

m

Flickr Commons http://www.flickr.co

m/commons/

Just Press Play

YouTube http://www.youtube.

com

YouTube EDU http://www.youtube.

com/education

Searching 2.0

Where will searching take us next?

Real-Time Results

Twitter http://www.search.twitter.

com http://www.crowdeye.com http://www.twitjobsearch.

com

Google Realtime http://www.google.com/re

altime

Mobile Search

Mobile search interfaces are streamlined to make searching on the go easier.

Yahoo Mobile http://m.yahoo.com/sear

ch

Touch and Go

Touch search for mobile devices.

Taptu http://www.taptu.c

om

SMS Search Tools

Libraries using SMS for reference http://bit.ly/c0QwFW

Cha-Cha http://www.chacha.com/

Who You Gonna Call?

Search using your phone 1 (800) GOOG.411

Mobile Visual Search

Google Goggles http://www.google.c

om/mobile/goggles

Goggles On!

Goggles searches for text and images.

Seeing Things Differently

Google Wonder Wheel http://www.google.co

m

TouchGraph http://

www.touchgraph.com

Exercise 4

Test your skills Use the handout provided to work on practice exercises

Keeping Up: Resources

New Books Sauers, Michael. Searching 2.0. 2009.

Devine, Jane and Francine Egger-Sider. Going Beyond Google: The Invisible Web in Learning and Teaching. 2009.

Croft, Bruce, Donald Metzler and Trevor Strohman. Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice. 2009.

Search Engine Resources

Google http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/

search http://labs.google.com

Yahoo http://research.yahoo.com/

Bing http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/

default.aspx

Search Engine Resources

How Stuff Works: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/search-engine.htm

Search Engine Land: http://searchengineland.com/

Tame the Web: http://tametheweb.com/

Search Engine Resources

Search Engine Watch: http://searchenginewatch.com/

Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/maxlibris/super.searcher.class

Library Resources

Library Success Wiki: http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Search_Engines

Infopeople Search Tools Chart: http://www.infopeople.org/search/chart.html

LITA blog: http://litablog.org/

Questions

Contact

Max Andersonmax@uic.eduTechnology CoordinatorNational Network of

Libraries of Medicine, Greater Midwest Region