45 Search Tips in 60 mintues

(my comments, if there are any, in parens)

Google Translated Search

Lots of translation services out there, but what if you want to search a concept in another language, but you don’t know how to express that or read the results?

Translates query, searches in language you want, brings results back to you in English.

Google knows synonyms

~word

its idea of a synonym isn’t always our idea of a synonym, but it’s pretty good.

Ride Finder

uses in-car GPS to track shuttles.

Google’s Topic Search

they’ve attempted to pull together best resources and organize information on frequently asked topics (hello, Yahoo in 1997!) Google brought in librarians to organize content on the web (copying Ask?).

Health related stuff in particular.

Google Trends

See how words are searched over time. (Zeitgeist+++)

multiple terms, graph, gives regions where searches originate. Search querys not mentions online.

Google Insights

• Volume
• Regional Interest
• Top Searches- people who were interested in search x also did search y
• Rising Searches

Be careful whens howing someone this, because some areas have really dodgy related searches!

Yahoo’s [Brackets]

retrieves words in that order, but not as a phrase.

[bank america] will get bank of america but not american banking.

Yahoo Glue

India’s Yahoo. Still in beta. completely different! Pulls all the stuff from the web- boxes with news results, yahoo answers, user reviews and ratings, etc.

Dogpile (wow, that’s an oldie but goodie!)

meta search is good to remind us that google isn’t the internet.

picks up sponsored ads as well as search results.

Jux2

another metasearch “what only google found” “what’s missing from google” (cool!)

Live.com

product ratings and reviews. They aggregate the sentiment of the reviews and give stats on features relevant to the product.

Synonym suggestion tool

You’re looking for other words and drawing a blank. developed for advertisers, not searchers, but it still works. Conceptually similar terms.

Blogpulse Trend Search

Trend results over time for blog posts about a concept.

Sortfix.com

google made better. sits on top of google. boxes on google with “Power Words” words used commonly with your search term. Can drag terms to “Add to search” box “remove” box. Standby box for terms you want to search later- inspriation box.

Zillow.com

(Evil! Evil!) How much your house is worth. The Zillow estimate is not always accurate!!! In condos, it averages the pricey and cheaper units.

OmniMedicalSearch.com

nice way of searching for medical information. Consumer related info v. Professional information v. discussion boards

TimeSearch.com

useful if you’re trying to find when something happened or you want to look at what was happening during a certain time.

Scrolling timebar on the side. Timeline results for your search.

Searchme.com

fun search engine. Type in a word and icons appear with different context? Sun: Astronomy, Astrology, Stocks, Computer Programming, Business News, Search All.

PowerSet.com

most useful if you’re looking for a lot of information about a topic that would be in wikipedia. it only works in wikipedia. pulls together all of the articles in wikipedia about a topic and tries to make sense of them. Good for extracting data, pulls out “factz”

SearchCrystal.com

metasearch- visual results. Good for distilling results for searches with lots of meaning.

Factbites.com

You just want the answer. Delivers answers, not results. For some quick lookups it can be useful

Carrot2.org

Tabs along the top. lets you change ranking algorithim. clusters on side and each algorithim will change clusters.

Silobreaker.com

competative intelligence folks came up with this. help you look at news in new and different ways. Key articles on one side. trends, hot spots, network puts together relationships among concepts or people.

Search Cloud.net

in other search engines, the first words searched are ranked as more important, but that’s all

This lets you make the search terms bigger or smaller based on the size of your terms.

Serph.com

from earlier session

Exalead.com

Very useful if you have spelling issues (oh, yes) or there are a lot of different spellings of a word. If you know how a word sounds or have an approixmate spelling. Labor/labour.

proximity searching- same sentence.

Seatguru.com

Where are the good seats? lots of information about each seat. Red seat is the worst seat.

Kosmix

encyclopedia results, image results, related ideas grouped by subject

Twing

Searching discussion boards for experts. Someone is obsessive when they’re interested in something you’re not. When you’re interested in it too, they’re an expert.

Directory of Open Source Journals

peer reviewed journals

free! author pays fee and that’s it.

doaj.org

OpenCongress.org

crack pipe for poitical junkies

Easy way of tracking legistation (ooh! thomas is tough- this could be cool!)

Congress gossip blog (heh)

Get some trade conference buzz.

See what bloggers have said about it, liveblogging, tag for confernce.

Look sideways

cast a wide net. sometimes you won’t find what you’re looking for, but you’ll find something close.

Let go of the perfect answer and see what’s close. move one step out and you may find exactly what you’re looking for by coming at it in a different way.

When drilling in webpages

use search this site to look for powerpoints, speeches, white papers etc. search terms: .ppt, .doc, powerpoint.

Wayback machine

archive.org

see how a company presented itself in the past.

Google alerts

not always real time, but as soon as google has found it.

Domaintools.com

Who is behind a website?

especially useful for political website. Who owns domain? mlk dot org example. (ick)

Hulu.com

(yay!) initiative by broadcasting companies- if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

tv and movies with ads.

HowStuffWorks.com

MEB uses it when she’s stuck on hold for entertainment.

NationMaster.com

national stats. govt and nongovt sources UN, CIA WFB, UNESCO, etc.

(I’m giggling in my head thinking of my gravymaster escapade)

GoogleLabs

advance access to new services and features.

sometimes things you love go away, but it’s often a way to get a first look at things that will soon be ubiquitous.(google’s dominance is a theme here!)

iGoogle

Ms. Dewey

microsoft brought in the actress and she stood in front of a camera for two days and just acted.

(done. Yow!)