This weeks lecture was about Search Engines. We learnt about the difference between a Search Engine and a Directory.
There are three catergories of information on the web:
The Free, Visible Web.
The Free, Invisible Web.
Paid Databases over the Web.
There are many different Search Engines on the web, the most common one is Google. Other common ones are Yahoo and Altavista. Search Engines help you to locate information on the topic or interest that you type into the search bar. S0metimes Search Engines can not always be accurate. By typing in one extra or different word that the Search Engine doesnt recognise, can result in displaying websites that you were not looking for.
Directories are Human-Edited. Reviews are added manually to ensure quality, which is why they are different to Search Engines. Some reliable Search Directories are
http://dmoz.org/ & http://directory.google.com/
I learnt that the term 'Boolean' means keywords such as 'not', 'and' 'or', which helps you search for a specific topic. Example 'football not soccer'. This then informs the Search Engine that I do not want things coming up that involve soccer.
TUTORIAL
Four Strategies to help me structure a good search:
1. Useful Keywords - To structure a good search you do not need to include words that are not neccessary. If I was searching for 'the best and worst dressed at the grammy awards' I would not need to use the words 'the, and and at' because they are not needed.
2. Check the relevance rankings - Even though a website may have a ranking of 5/5 stars, it does not mean that it contains relevant information. If you search the term 'cancer' the search engine will rank the site the highest which repeats the word 'cancer' over and over again the highest. This does not neccessarily mean that this is the most suitable site to your search.
3. Concept Based Searching - These search systems try to locate information by determining what you mean, not what you say. It returns hits on documents that are "about" the subject/theme you're exploring, even if the words in the document don't precisely match the words you enter into the query.
4. Refine Your Search - Sites offer 2 different types of searches. 1 is a 'basic' search and the other is an 'advanced' search. In an advanced search you can search on more than one word and are able to search on proper names, on phrases, and on words that are found within a certain proximity to other search terms.
In the quiz I made it up to question 11, therefore this proves that the methods I used in my searching were successful. I used the search engine Google, and mainly typed in keywords for what I was searching for. I disgarded Boolean words such as 'and, or, the' which gave me better results. I also looked at the websites information and took note on whether they were spoofs or not, this helped me to make the decision whether the information on them would be accurate or not.
I have found that there is a lot of fake websites out there on the Internet, and when I am conducting my research in the future I know what to look out for to decide whether the website is genuine or not. I will now get more accurate results in my search as I have learnt more tips and found out more ways of searching for what I want (not just through Google).
Reading 1 - Web Search Strategies.
This article covers finding what you want on the internet and how to determine whether what you find is good enough or not. There are different categories on the web such as the free visible web, the free invisible web and paid databases over the web. It discusses the search tool types and suggests tips on where to start your search.
Reading 2 - History of the Internet
This article gives the history on:
Directories
Search Engines
Databases
Library Catalogues
In 1990, the first search engine was developed at McGill University.
Reading 3 - Search Engine Optimisation
This article talks about search engine optimisation in small businesses. The program provides recommendations from a small business marketing company for small business websites, relating keywords that people type into search engines to match the small business's website theme or text content. It records the small business's websites ranking, therefore the business's can measure their progress. It gathers quality links from other websites which are of similar theme to the business's.
No comments:
Post a Comment