Going Beyond Google

Going Beyond Google
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading
Magazine for Information
Professionals
Agenda





Googlization of Online
Other Web Search Engines
Search Syntax
Compare with Traditional Online
What We Can Expect in the Future
NOLUG 2006
2
What Does Online Mean




Librarians were the early adopters of
online technology
“Our” online predates the Internet and
the personal computer
So why don’t our users know about
our online search skills?
We have got to show we’re better
than Google
NOLUG 2006
3
Out Googling



We need to Out Google Google
Prove our worth
Make libraries, information centers,
and information professionals relevant
both in reality and in the eyes of our
users and those who fund us
NOLUG 2006
4
Googlization of Online



Online = Search =
Google
John Battelle’s book
But search engines
don’t do what
libraries do
NOLUG 2006
5
Into the GYM

Google
– Still the most popular search engine

Yahoo!
– Gaining on Google

MSN (now Live Search)
– Love them or hate them, it’s Microsoft
NOLUG 2006
6
Important Alternatives

Ask (Jeeves retired)
– Now owned by Barry Diller (IAC)

Exalead
– Developed in France, now has US office

A9
– Part of Amazon

Gigablast
– Added blog search
NOLUG 2006
7
Whatever Happened To..





AltaVista
AllTheWeb
WiseNut
Teoma
Northern Light
NOLUG 2006
8
Non-English Search
Engines

Search Engine Colossus
– Canadian
– http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/

Phil Bradley
– British
– http://www.philb.com/countryse.htm
NOLUG 2006
9
Vertical Search Engines







FirstGov.gov
Answers.com
Scopus.com, Scirus.com
Topix.net
Oodle.com
GlobalSpec.com
GYM verticals
NOLUG 2006
10
Metasearch Engines

Vivisimo (now Clusty.com)
– Cluster technology
– Creating verticals

Dogpile
– Infospace
– GYMA


Mamma.com
Trovando.it
NOLUG 2006
11
Vertical Metasearch
Engines


Kayak
Clusty
NOLUG 2006
12
Visual Search

Groxis’ Grokker
– EBSCO


Kartoo
Touchgraph
NOLUG 2006
13
Search Syntax







Implied Boolean AND
OR
Minus sign for NOT
Exact phrase
NEAR
Intervening words
Prefixes
NOLUG 2006
14
Field Searching



Advanced search boxes
Look at syntax and put into search box
Limitations to field searching
NOLUG 2006
15
Going Beyond Google At
Google





Advanced search
Tabs (only they aren’t tabs anymore)
Clicking on More
Synonym feature not working properly
Link feature not robust
NOLUG 2006
16
Going Beyond Google with
Other Search Engines


Each search engine has a different
database
Good ways to compare:
– Twingine.com
– Jux2.com
– Thumbshots (ranking.thumbshots.org)


Not everything is on the Internet
Not everything can be found via Web
search engines
NOLUG 2006
17
What Else Web Search
Engines Do




Localization (competition with Yellow
Pages?)
Personalization (does this work for
libraries?)
Numeric (calculations, U.S. phone numbers)
Shortcuts (flights, package tracking)
NOLUG 2006
18
More Offerings from
Search Engines




Doodles & Jokes (particularly Google,
but Yahoo has a sense of humor)
News, Alerting (Yahoo, Google)
Books (find in a library) (Google,
Yahoo)
Scholarly Literature (Google, MSN)
NOLUG 2006
19
Search Engine or Portal?


Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
NOLUG 2006
20
Going Beyond Web
Search



The hidden Web is not as hidden as it
used to be
Lots more formats than HTML
Moving into blogs, audio, video,
images
NOLUG 2006
21
Blogs


Personal opinions, diaries, essays,
news analysis
Blog search engines:
– Technorati, Ice Rocket
– Blogger, Bloglines


Added to Yahoo News Search, then
removed
No search engine is complete
NOLUG 2006
22
Tags




User-supplied “indexing”
Folksonomies
Can be easily searched at Technorati
Inconsistent, uncontrolled
NOLUG 2006
23
Podcasts


Listening in to information
Podcast search engines:
– Podzinger, Podscope, Singingfish,
Podcastalley


How do they search?
Often better to go directly to the
source
NOLUG 2006
24
Video Search

Google and Yahoo are experimenting
with video (YouTube acquisition)
– Letting users upload their own
– Social networking model at other sites



Singingfish
Blinkx
How they search: metadata or speech
recognition
NOLUG 2006
25
Search Engine
Optimization





Manipulating search results
Organic
How does this affect search results
How do paid search results display
Do end users understand
NOLUG 2006
26
Traditional Online Search
Engines





EBSCOhost
ProQuest
Factiva
Nexis
Dialog
NOLUG 2006
27
EBSCOhost


Visualization
Clustering
NOLUG 2006
28
Factiva


Tag clouds
Graphs
NOLUG 2006
29
Online 2.0? Or 3.0?





How are traditional engines evolving?
Clustered results
Visualization, “delisting”
Making data work harder
Ending “siloization”
NOLUG 2006
30
The Future





Is always hard to predict
Will Google continue to be
synonymous with search?
Will Yahoo! catch up?
Will Ask join the gym?
Where do libraries and librarians fit?
NOLUG 2006
31
Contact Details



Marydee Ojala
marydee@xmission.com
www.onlinemag.net
NOLUG 2006
32