The Extreme Searchers Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher

leondumoulin.nl: The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher (): Randolph Hock, Gary Price: Books.
Table of contents

Beyond search engines, Hock instructs about services that many people not be familiar with such as UseNet, still one of the most powerful ways to get esoteric technical information, forums, groups and so on. Along the way, Hock dispenses nuggets of internet history which many people - sadly - aren't aware of. The only grievous error I found was Hock's choices of recommended news sources. Each of those Hock recommends has been criticized for biased and incomplete reportage and in three cases has been shown to be fabricating stories, photos and even video in order to shape public opinion.

I think Hock should have included more sources so the reader would be introduced to a wider range of viewpoints. Shopping and price comparison sites, news aggregators, blogs and more are covered. There are quite a few specialty sites that I was glad to learn about. Amazingly, Hock doesn't treat any of these in a completely superficial manner. In each case, he provides at least the basic information about what the resource provides and how to use it. For any researcher using the internet, this is a must-have book. This book has been very helpful in finding more academic sources for my research.

In the old days all the results were either Universities or porn sites - now it's all Wikipedia. This book is about finding more informative and reliable sources. Take it from a retired librarian. This resource should be on every serious searcher's shelf next to Chris Sherman's book s and Find It Online. Gary Price updates his website to supplement the chapters in the written book, which is very helpful. Price takes a slightly different approach to Sherman, which helps to find resources which might not be self-apparent from Sherman's books. I can't imagine being without either this tool or those of Price's colleague Sherman.

I scored this book only a 3, because quite frankly I was expecting more. Definitely not "Extreme Searching" in any sense of the word. But then I grew up in the early days of the net when search engines were still rather primitive and you really had to have some knowledge of Boolean Logic and Logic Strings to find anything.

Not so much now with Google being pretty much idiot-proof. For the advanced web user, there is still some useful information in the book. Plus, it is a quick read, so Why Not? Needed this book for a course. One person found this helpful. Library Binding Verified Purchase. This is such a valuable resource for anyone that spends time surfing the internet.

This book shows you how to get more out of your searching experience and actually have a higher chance of finding exactly what you are looking for. I highly recommend this book. One person found this helpful 2 people found this helpful. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. I found this book very helpful for finding almost anything on the internet. Prior t this book I had a difficult time with finding unusual items. The websites and links included alone are worth the purchase price.

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Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Set up a giveaway. Customers who bought this item also bought. Theory and Practice, 6th Edition. Web Literacy for Educators. Cultivating Mindfulness in the Classroom -effective, low-cost way for educators to help students manage stress The Classroom Strategies. Pages with related products. See and discover other items: There's a problem loading this menu right now. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations.

View or edit your browsing history. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. Identify your basic ideas concepts and rely on the built-in relevance ranking provided by search engines. When you enter terms in the major search engines and many other search sites, only those records webpages that contain all those terms will be retrieved, and the engine will automatically rank the order of output based on various criteria Figure 1.

Use simple narrowing techniques if your results need narrowing: These kinds of techniques will be discussed in Chapter 4. Examine your first results and look for, and then use, relevant terms you might not have thought of at first.

See a Problem?

If you do not seem to be getting enough relevant items, use the Boolean OR operation to allow for alternate terms; for example, electrical OR electricity would find all items that have either the term electrical or the term electricity. How you express the OR operation varies a bit with the finding tool, but in most cases, it is the word OR, in capital letters. Use a combination of Boolean operations AND, OR, NOT, or their equivalents to identify those pages that contain a specific combination of concepts and alternate terms for those concepts for example, to get all pages that contain either the term cloth or the term fabric and also contain the words flax and shrinkage.

Look at what else the finding tools particularly search engines can do to allow you to get as much as you need—and only what you need. Advanced search pages are probably the first place you should look. Ask five different experienced searchers and you will get five different lists of strategies. The most important thing is to have an awareness of the Figure 1. In understanding what you are getting—and not getting—as a result of a search of the internet requires consideration of a number of factors, such as the time frames covered, quality of content, and a recognition that various kinds of material exist on the internet that are not readily accessible by search engines.

In using the content found on the internet, other issues must also be considered, such as copyright. Assessing Quality of Content A favorite complaint of those remaining people who are still a bit shy of the internet is that the quality of information they find is often low. The same could be said about information available from a lot of other resources. A newsstand may have both the Economist and the National Enquirer on its shelves.

On television, you will find both The History Channel and infomercials. Experience has taught us how, in most cases, to make a quick determination of the relative quality of the information we encounter in our daily lives.


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In using the internet, many of the same criteria can be successfully applied, particularly those criteria we are accustomed to applying to traditional print resources, both popular and academic. These traditional evaluation techniques and criteria that can be applied in the internet context include: From what organization does the content originate? Look for the name of the organization both on the webpage itself and in the URL.

Is the content identified as coming from a known source such as a news organization, a government, an academic journal, a professional association, or a major investment firm? Just because the information does not come from such a source is certainly not cause enough to reject it outright. Often you will immediately be able to identify the owner. Peel back the URL to the domain name.

For most countries, Whois-type sites are available. Be aware that some look-alike domain names are intended to fool the reader as to the origin of the site. There are some very valuable personal pages out there. Is the actual author identified? Search for other things by the same author.

Does she or he publish a lot on spontaneous human combustion or extraterrestrial origins of life on Earth? It is easy to impersonate someone on the internet. There is nothing inherently bad or for that matter necessarily inherently good in any of those purposes, of course, but identifying the motivation can be helpful in assessing the degree of objectivity. Is any advertising on the page clearly identified, or is advertising disguised as something else?

Look at the quality of the writing. Look at the quality of the documentation of sources cited. On the other hand, and more importantly, if facts are cited, does the page identify the origin of the facts? If a lot rests on the information you are gathering, check out a few of the cited sources to be sure they really do give the facts that were quoted. Is the site and its contents as current as it should be? If a site is reporting on current events, the need for currency and the answer to the question of currency will be apparent. What is the most recent material that is referred to?

If you find a number of dead links, assume the author of the page is not giving it much attention. For facts you are going to use, verify using multiple sources, or choose the most authoritative source. If you need a specific fact, such as the date of a historic event, look for more than one webpage that gives the date and see if they agree. Also remember that some websites are more authoritative than others. If you have a quotation in hand and want to find who said it, you might want to go to a source such as Bartleby.

For more details and other ideas about evaluating quality of information found on the internet, the following two resources will be useful. Evaluating the Quality of Information on the Internet www. The site provides checklists and examples of sites that demonstrate both good and bad qualities. Links to exercises and worksheets on the topic are also included. Retrospective Coverage of Content It is tempting to say that a major weakness of internet content is lack of retrospective coverage. This is certainly an issue for which the serious user should have a high level of awareness.

It is also an issue that should be put into perspective. The importance and amount of relevant retrospective coverage available depends on the kind of information you are seeking at any particular moment and on your particular question. It is safe to say that no webpages on the internet were created before Books, Ancient Writings, and Historical Documents The lack of pre webpages does not mean that earlier content is not available. Indeed, if a published work is moderately well-known and was written before or so, you are at least as likely to find it on the internet as in a small local public library.

Also look at some of the other websites discussed in Chapter 6 for sources of historical documents. Scholarly and Technical Journals and Popular Magazines If you are looking for full-text articles from journals or magazines written several years ago, you are not likely to find them free on the internet and, for most journal articles, you are not even very likely to find the ones written this week, last month, or last year. This lack of content is more a function of copyright and requirements for paid subscriptions than a matter of the retrospective aspect.

Most likely you will need to pay to see the full text, but fees tend to be very reasonable. But if you are looking for newspaper articles or other news reports dating back more than a few days, the time span of available content on any particular site is crucial. Fortunately, more and more newspaper and other news sites are now archiving their material, and you may find several years of content on the site.

Look closely at the site to see exactly how far back the site goes. Old Web Pages A different aspect of the retrospective issue centers on the fact that many webpages change frequently and many simply disappear altogether. Pages that existed in the early s are likely either to be gone or to have different content than they did then. This becomes a significant problem when trying to track down early content or citing early content. Fortunately, there are at least partial solutions to the problem.

For webpages in their databases, major search engines have stored a copy. Even if you found the page elsewhere initially, search for it using a search engine, and if you find it there, try the cache. For locating earlier pages and their content, try the Wayback Machine. Wayback Machine—Internet Archive www. A search yields a list of what pages are available for what dates as far back as Figure 1.

As well as webpages, it archives moving images, texts, music, and other audio. Its producers claim it is the largest database ever built. You can get to most of them if you know the URL, but a search engine search will probably not find them for you. These resources, often referred to as the Deep Web, the Hidden Web, or the Invisible Web, contain a variety of content, including— and most importantly—databases of articles, data, statistics, and government documents. Knowing about the Deep Web is important because it contains a lot of tremendously useful information—and it is large.

Various estimates put the size of the Deep Web at from to times the content of the visible web. Before that number sinks in and alarms you, keep in mind the following: The Deep Web contains very important material. For the information there that you are likely to have a need for and the right to access, there are ways of finding out about it and getting to it. To adequately understand what the Deep Web is all about, one must know why certain kinds of content are not visible to search engine searches.

Note the use of the word content instead of the word sites. The main page of a Deep Web site is usually easy to find and is covered by search engines. It is the rest of the site webpages and other content within the site that may be hidden. Search engines do not index certain web content mainly for the following reasons: The search engine does not know about the page. No one has submitted the URL to the search engine, and no pages currently covered by the search engine have linked to it.

The search engines have decided not to index the content because it is too deep in the site and probably less useful , the page changes so frequently that indexing the content would be somewhat meaningless as, for example, in the case of some news pages , or the page is generated dynamically and likewise is not amenable to indexing. The search engine has been asked not to index the content by the presence of a robots.

The search engine does not have or use the technology required to index non-HTML content. This applies to files such as images and a few other file types. Because of this increased coverage, the Deep Web may actually be shrinking in proportion to the size of the total web. The search engine cannot get to the pages to index them because it encounters a request for a password or the site has a search box that must be filled out in order to get to the content. It is the last part of the last category that holds the most interest for searchers—sites that hold their information in databases.

Prime examples of such sites would be phone directories, literature databases such as Medline , newspaper sites, and patents databases. As you can see, if you can find out that the site exists, then you can search its contents without going through a search engine. This leads to the obvious question of where one finds out about sites that contain unindexed Deep Web content. The best way to find out about these sites is to find a good specialized directory resource guide that covers your area of interest. In such a directory, you will find reference to the major websites in that subject area, including websites that contain databases see Chapter 2 for the discussion of specialized directories.

In the past, there were multiple sites that contained collections of links to major Deep Web websites.

The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher; Third Edition

Some of the best known have now been discontinued or have not been updated because of the difficulty of adequately keeping up. The following site, however, is a directory of searchable databases that provides another way of finding Deep Web websites for a broad variety of subject areas. For more information on what the Deep Web is, why things are invisible to search engines, etc. Because this chapter is about basics, however, a few general points will be made here, and the reader is encouraged to go for more detail to the sources listed next, which are much more authoritative and extensive on the copyright issue.

Copyright—Some Basic Points Here are some basic points about copyright: As stated on the official U. Other countries will have similar definitions and descriptions according to their own legal definition of copyright. Regardless of the country, copyright and any failure to acknowledge it appropriately has legal, moral, and economic implications and repercussions. They are often more useful for navigating a site than the graphics and links on its home page.

Assume that what you find on a website is copyrighted, unless the site states otherwise or you know otherwise, based, for example, on the age of the item. See the site for the copyright office in your own country for details about the time frames for copyrights. Government are not eligible for U. You should still identify the source when quoting something from a site, even if the material is not under copyright. The same basic rules that apply to using printed material apply to using material you get from the internet, the most important being: For any work you write for someone else to read, cite the sources you use.

For more information on copyright and the internet, see the following sources. Copyright Office site has copyright information for the U. Intellectual Property Office—Copyright www. Patent Office site describes in detail, but also in a very readable fashion, what both the creators and users of copyrighted material need to know. For other countries, do a search for analogous sites. It also provides background and discussion on some well-known legal cases on the topic.

Basically, when citing internet sources, you need to give as much of the typical citation information as you would for a printed source author, title, publication, date, etc. If you are submitting a paper to a journal for publication, to a professor, or including it in a book, you need to be more careful and follow whatever style guide is recommended. Since the details of exactly how you will write the latter kind of citation will vary both with the particular style MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.

Fortunately, many style guides are available online. The following two sites provide links to popular style guides online. Citing Your Sources www. Also, numerous specialized sites that cover specific areas such as science or tools such as search engines will be mentioned throughout the following chapters. All the sites listed here provide free email alert services and also provide archives of past content.

The site also provides a blog newsletter that is extremely useful for being alerted to new sites, particularly those in the Deep Web.

The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher by Randolph Hock

The Internet Scout Project scout. Along the way, I may gain information about what else is available. If I am looking for digital picture frames, I could take the same approach, but I might not be sure whether to look in the home furnishings department with other frames or in the electronics section. In either case, I also have the option of just asking a sales associate, who, with a little bit of luck, will tell me precisely where to go. Finding things on the internet is similar. We can browse through labels categories , or we can ask directly, using a search engine. Even for individual websites, we often have the choice of just asking, using a search box, or browsing categories.

Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, bringing up issues such as terminology, serendipity, efficiency, reliability, etc. In this chapter, we look at tools for browsing: The common themes of all of these tools are selectivity and organization of information. Although general web directories, such as the Yahoo! Directory, have quite a bit in common with web search engines, they also differ tremendously from search engines, particularly in size, purpose, and, of course, selectivity and organization.

General web directories serve unique research purposes and in some cases may be the best starting point, even though their databases include far less than 1 percent of what search engine databases cover. The result is a collection of sites that is selective sites have to meet the selection criteria and categorized all sites are arranged in categories; see Figure 1.

Because of the selectivity, the directory user is working, theoretically, with higher quality sites—the wheat and not the chaff. Because the sites are arranged in categories, the user has the option of starting at the top of the category hierarchy and browsing down until the appropriate level of specificity is reached. In further contrast to search engines, directories both general and specialized usually have only one entry for each site, instead of including many pages from the same site.

For search purposes, the directories may index a site only under the words in the category, the name of the site, and a brief description, in contrast to search engines, which may index every word on a page. The databases of general web directories are much smaller than those created and used by web search engines, the former containing at most a few million sites and the latter billions of pages. Web directories are designed primarily for browsing and for answering general questions. The advantages of general directories had been their categorization and selectivity.

They still provide categories for easy browsing of topics, but the selectivity function has become much less relevant. Interest in general directories has plummeted, reflected in the fact that the prominence of the Yahoo! As late as , the directory was Yahoo! The other major general directory, Open Directory, is still alive, but it receives little attention from the general web user.

This categorization can be the most important reason to go to a directory. It allows browsing down through the levels of the classification hierarchy and can provide valuable direction for a searcher who is not quite sure how to narrow down a broad topic. Different directories use different classification schemes, which may influence a user to choose one over another.

Both directories, however, do use cross-references indicated by an sign , which means that you do not have to rely entirely on choosing exactly the correct category in which to begin your browsing. Directory and Open Directory automatically AND all of the terms you enter, and allow you to use quotation marks to search for phrases and a minus sign to exclude a term. Both also have an advanced search page that enables you to search within a specific category.

Size of Web Directory Databases Whereas major web search engines can contain as many as several billion records webpages , directories typically have a few million or a few thousand records sites. This is good news and bad news: As a rule of thumb, you might think in terms of the number of concepts involved.

One or two concepts such as Tblisi or Tblisi museums is fairly general, and you might want to head for a directory rather than a search engine. A search involving three concepts is getting more specific than a general directory is able to support, for example, Tblisi art museums. This is basically a corollary of the previous point: Start with a general web directory when you know you need to get more specific than what you have in mind at the moment, and you need to browse to help narrow your search. Following that is a discussion of specialized directories that focus on particular subject areas.

Directory is the best-known general web directory, although it is probably smaller than Open Directory. Directory from the Yahoo! By , the emphasis on the main page had moved in the direction of a web portal, with a lot more resources besides just the directory. To get to the Yahoo! Directory, the easiest way is to go directly to dir. Note the following points: There is a search box that allows you to search the web, the Directory, or just within the current category.

The Categories choice is a very powerful tool. Near the top of each page, Yahoo! The Categories section of each page shows what additional subcategories are available and how many listings are in each. The sign indicates that this is a cross-reference to a category primarily found elsewhere in the hierarchy.

In this example, on the Anthropology and Archaeology page, if you click on Anthrozoology, you will be taken to a page from the Biology category. Site Listings lists the sites classified at this current level of specificity. Clicking on an entry will take you to the actual site. In some cases, the list can be broken down by popularity or in alphabetical order.

The Sponsor Results found here are ads. With this feature, you can have Yahoo! The directory portion of the site contains age- and content-appropriate sites, along with a number of other references and other features to use at home and in the classroom. Browsing a general web directory can be a great way to get ideas for term papers. The Open Directory database is used for the directories that you will find on many other sites, including Google at directory.

Browsing Open Directory Open Directory divides its site into 16 top-level categories, and each is further categorized into several additional levels, such as: Supranational The World category is unique in that it provides directory access to websites in 80 languages. The subcategories found there will differ.

A look at a sample directory page as with Yahoo! The most significant features are: A search box gives the option of searching the entire directory or just the current category. A reminder, under the search box, is given of where you are in the subject hierarchy. Each level is clickable, allowing you to move back up the hierarchy easily.

The latter points to other sections in the Open Directory, as does the sign that occurs after some of the subcategories. Following the subcategories will be the listings of the sites themselves, with brief annotations. Unique to Open Directory is the Descriptions link in the upper righthand corner of the page. At the bottom of the pages are links to several search engines and even to Yahoo!. Clicking the links will execute a search on the name of the current category using these tools. Searching Open Directory The Open Directory database can be searched using the search box found on the main page, at the top of directory pages, and at the bottom of search results pages.

Search syntax is a bit more sophisticated than that offered by Yahoo!: Eastern Europe will get only those items containing both terms capitalization is ignored. However, if you are looking for that degree of specificity, consider using a search engine instead of a directory. The number of sites in the category is also shown. The category in which the term occurred is also shown and is clickable so it can take you to that category. Clicking on any of these links will cause you to be switched to that engine, and your search will be executed there.

Another Open Directory search box will also be found at the bottom of search results pages. Most of the others specialize in some way, and the dividing line between general and specialized is a bit hazy. Some directories are general with regard to subjects covered but specialized with regard to geographic coverage, such as the numerous country-specific directories. Those directories that are specialized by subject are covered later in this chapter.

Here, though, we will look at two more directories that are general with regard to subject coverage but are much more selective and, hence, much smaller. Others fall in this category, but these two are certainly among the best and are representative of the genre. Information You Can Trust www. There is also a special emphasis on resources for children, teens, and teachers. Browsing ipl2 ipl2 provides plus subject areas for browsing each with from six to 30 subcategories , plus sections of links for Ready Reference, Reading Room magazines and newspapers online , KidSpace, TeenSpace, Special Collections, and Searching Tools.

Annotations are provided for each item. Searching ipl2 A search box appears on most pages. The search automatically ANDs your terms, but you can use an OR between terms, and you can truncate using an asterisk e. Where to Find Other General Directories Unfortunately, most lists of searching tools do not adequately distinguish between search engines and directories and simply lump the two species together. Keeping that in mind, one place to go for a list of regional continent- or country-specific tools is Search Engine Colossus www.

Web directories are most useful when you have a general rather than a specific question. The content of directories is selected by humans who evaluate the usefulness and appropriateness of sites considered for inclusion. Directories tend to have one listing per website and do not index individual pages. They provide not only a good starting place for effectively utilizing internet resources in a particular area, but also, very importantly, a confidence in knowing that no really important tools in that area are being missed.

The variety of these sites is endless. They can be discipline-oriented or industry-oriented; they may focus on a specific kind of document e. Some easy and reasonably effective ways include: As a matter of fact, it lists one or more specialized directories for almost categories, ranging from semiconductors to storytelling to sumo.

The trick to finding them in Yahoo! Just look for the Web Directories subcategory, either by browsing through the Yahoo! You may actually get more complete results by using the regular Yahoo! This syntax will be explained in Chapter 3. Using Directories of Directories Directories of directories are valuable resources for locating topic-specific information.

The following two sites contain collections of specialized directories and may contain other content as well. In essence, it is one large directory with individual sections maintained by a large number of volunteers, but because the format of each section is also very independently done, The WWW Virtual Library is indeed a collection of individual directories. The quality of the individual directories tends to be quite high. Using Search Engines You may be successful in finding a specialized directory in your subject area by searching a term for your area AND the word resources, for example, geology resources.

If you would like to get a site that provides a list of printed resources for a subject as well as internet resources, use the word pathfinder. If you want to find the best, several factors must be considered. An excellent specialized directory does not have to be strong in all of these facets, but, depending on your needs, you might want to focus on a few particular aspects.

Directories tend to differ mainly in these terms: Annotations, however, can be very useful, as they provide a quick overview of what the sites cover and any special characteristics of the sites. If the directory is large, this can be quite useful. Unfortunately, many sites do not give a clear indication of who produced them, and you may have to rely on the URL for a clue.

Look for such features as news headlines, lists of events conferences, etc. Some were chosen simply because they are sites that most serious searchers should be aware of; some demonstrate particularly good or unique characteristics of a specialized directory; some are very wide-ranging as well as having other values as a specialized directory. In some categories, such as Government, more than one example is listed to show contrasts between sites. Sometimes multiple directories are listed for an area because I just could not make up my mind which one to choose.


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In one sense, each section of a general directory such as Yahoo! Directory or Open Directory is itself a specialized directory. General, Academic, and Reference Tools The first site that follows provides an extensive collection of links to reference tools such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, and so forth. The last two included in this section—Project Gutenberg and the Library of Congress Gateway—provide links to books and library catalogs available online.

It had achieved a well-deserved status on its own but got a boost when then-U. Secretary of State Colin Powell said something to the effect that it should be on the screen of every State Department employee. Most of the reference tools are found toward the bottom of the page. Look here for sources that will be useful at the university level. The advanced search page has quite extensive searching capabilities for a specialized directory.

Part of its uniqueness is that the main categories used are based on the Dewey Decimal Classification, and it has a particularly strong focus on library and information science. The collection is arranged in 19 main categories, covering the broad range of academic disciplines. The entire collection can be searched using the search box on the main page or by using its advanced search page, or it can be browsed by using the categories Figure 2. Library of Congress Gateway to Library Catalogs lcweb.

All of these are catalogs that use the Z Best of History Web Sites www. Virtual Religion Index virtualreligion. Your best bet for focusing on a specific science may be to try the techniques for finding specialized directories mentioned earlier or to browse the appropriate section on sites such as INFOMINE. The following are some notable examples of science sites in specific areas. The links are arranged by 13 top-level categories and include both scholarly sites and links to chemical companies and suppliers.

Go to WebElements for an outstanding online periodic table. Even if you have no connection with chemistry, you will find the site interesting and even fun, with contents ranging from the usual periodic table data for each element to bond enthalpies to cartoons about the elements.

Find a copy in the library

Department of Health and Human Services, this site provides reliable health information aimed at consumers. It includes links that range from a medical encyclopedia to background on diseases to directories of physicians, hospitals, and nursing homes, and a variety of other easily understandable resources. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health, is a portal that offers a combination of information provided directly on the site and an extensive collection of links. The Health Topics section contains more than topics related to medical conditions, diseases, and wellness.

Other parts of the MedlinePlus site include Drug Information, Medical Encyclopedia, Dictionaries, News health news from the past 90 days , Directories doctors, dentists, and hospitals , Go Local for local resources , and Other Resources. Some of the sites listed there, such as CorporateInformation, can also be considered specialized directories. This is an excellent example of a library pathfinder. As such, even though many of the links point to resources that are restricted to local users, the information provided by those links should itself be useful to others in that it identifies non-free-internet content with which business researchers in general should be familiar.

Only about half of the or so sites listed are annotated and just briefly , but the clarity, selectivity, and categories into which they are divided make it an easy and quick guide to critical business resources. For a good understanding of what it can provide, spend three or four minutes browsing the unique arrangement of category links. The main site is free, but a paid subscription provides customization of the home page, email, and other tools and benefits.

Resources for Economists on the Internet rfe. These sections range from the obvious things of interest to economists, such as data, to less obvious but very useful categories, such as software and mailing lists. If you need a break, check out the Neat Stuff section.

The Extreme Searchers Internet Handbook A Guide for the Serious Searcher

Government and Governments Although some countries have a single site that provide links to sites for individual government departments or ministries, many do not, and it is not always easy to identify the particular agency site you need. The next three sites are examples of portals for specific countries, and the final site in this section is a resource guide for political parties worldwide. Governments on the WWW www. There are no annotations, but the names of the sites are translated into English.

Note particularly the sets of links for Federal Government U. Click on any of the main categories for a further breakdown by region, topic, etc. The Government Information by Topic section provides a subject approach, and the Government Agencies menu will take you to links arranged by branch of government and also provides an alphabetic index to agencies. The A—Z of Central Government link leads to an alphabetic list of government departments, agencies, and other public bodies.

Government of Canada Official Website canada. Political Resources on the Net www. On the map on the home page, click on a continent and then the country. Links for international parties and other related resources are also provided. Most of the legal resources are primarily focused on the U. Within these articles, you will find thousands of related links including links to individual departments, agencies, etc.

You can browse by subject or use the alphabetic index. It is a good source for links to lesson plans, among other things. The site itself is more a portal, not merely a directory, and contains much original content by the producers of the site such as articles and lesson plans as well as the links to other sites. It also has categories for a variety of topics such as Home Schooling, Instructional Technology, and Regional international. News Kidon Media-Link www. The site is arranged by continent and then country, and provides more than 19, links to newspapers, news agencies, magazines, radio, and TV sites Figure 2.

Additional news resource guides can be found in Chapter 8. You can browse through the categories or take advantage of the search box. Both beginners and experienced genealogists should find it useful. They typically have a variety of tools such as a search engine, directory, news, etc. Portals can often be personalized with regard to content and layout. Many serious searchers choose a portal, make it their start page, and personalize it.

The portal concept goes considerably beyond the idea of web directories as we have been discussing them. However, this chapter seems the appropriate place to discuss them since general web portals, like directories, embody the concept of getting the user quickly and easily to the most relevant web resources. In addition, the natures of directories and portals are melded so tightly that it is not feasible to try to totally separate them.

Well-known general portals include Yahoo! Most countries have their own popular general portals, for example, the French portal Voila! General portals usually exhibit three main characteristics: Instead of having to go to different sites to get the news headlines and weather, or to find a phone directory, general web directory, search engine, and so forth, a portal can put this information—or links to this information— right on your start page. General portals usually include some variety of the following on their main pages: The overall thrust is to provide a collection of information so useful that it makes it worthwhile to go to that page first.

If you look around on the main pages of these sites, you will usually see either a Personalize link or a link to a My… option, such as My Yahoo! A sign-in link will do likewise. As a matter of fact, a case could be made that for the serious searcher, Yahoo! Directory and with the disappearance of the directory from Yahoo! Some of them, such as news headlines, are displayed directly on the page, along with links to more than 30 other portal features, such as Autos, Real Estate, and Finance. Many of these links lead to more specialized portal pages provided by the site with, again, a collection of tools and links specific to the topic of the channel.

Other links on Yahoo! The best way to understand a portal such as Yahoo! Skip the ads, though. Then enter the URL including the http: An example of a personalized general portal page My Yahoo! Mail, a calendar, etc.

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It also provides personalized versions for many of its 42 country or language-specific versions. Though it made its reputation on the simplicity of its home page, Google also recognized a few years later the benefits of having a personalizable portal similar to My Yahoo! The result is iGoogle, a personalizable page similar not surprisingly in many ways to My Yahoo! Some Other Popular General Portals The following sites also all exhibit the three characteristics of general portals to varying degrees and with varying content.

Try more than one before deciding. Most of the better-known general portals have dozens of options to choose from many, many more if the portal allows you to add any RSS feed you wish. Such items as Word of the Day and Pregnancy Watch may or may not be of interest to you. Your personal stock portfolio is handled very differently by various portals, and what data the portal displays and how it displays that data may make the difference in your choice.

A portal may allow very detailed specification of what categories of headlines are displayed, or it may allow for only very general categories, and so on. The following portals, along with My Yahoo! Frequently Asked Questions about Portals www. With general web directories, the fact that sites are placed in categories to allow browsing makes these tools a good starting place when you want selected sites, when you want only a few sites, and when your question is general rather than specific.

Take advantage of one of the general, personalizable portals as a starting place, so you can easily go to your own selection of frequently needed information. Search, and Bing, stand in contrast to web directories in three primary ways: For someone using internet resources, a workable definition of a web search engine is a service on the web that allows searching of a large database of webpages by word, phrase, and other criteria.

Four major steps are involved in making webpages searchable by a search engine service. For some engines, popular sites likely to have many links to them are crawled more thoroughly and more frequently than less popular sites. Tied into this crawling function is a second way for webpages to get identified—by the process of submitted URLs. Other parts of the page may also be indexed, such as the URL, metatags see Glossary , the URLs of links on the page, and image file names. Another important and more challenging process is also involved, that of determining the order in which the retrieved records should be displayed.

These pages contain the search box es , links to the various databases that are searchable images, news, etc. With any particular search engine, some available options are presented on the home page, but on the advanced search page, usually several more options are clearly displayed. Options are typically made available in one of two ways: An example of the menu approach is shown in Figure 3. In this example, the search is requesting that only those pages be retrieved that have the term antioxidants in the title of the page. Here in Google the intitle: Whenever using prefixes such as this to qualify a search term, be sure not to put a space on either side of the colon.

The menu approach is easier in that you do not need to know the somewhat cryptic prefixes. If you do know the prefixes, you may accomplish your search more quickly and easily. These include phrase searching, language specification, and specifying that you retrieve only pages where your term appears in a particular part field of the record, such as the title, URL, or links. Every engine also offers some form of Boolean operations. The following gives a quick look at why you might want to use or not use those options. Expect occasional changes in exactly which options are offered by which engines.

Phrase Searching Phrase searching is an option that is available in every search engine, and perhaps surprisingly, it can be done the same way in all of them. To search for a phrase, put the phrase in quotation marks. You will avoid records such as one about the red wolves of Alligator River. Whenever your concept is best expressed as a phrase, be sure to use quotation marks. You are not limited to two words; you can use several.

Some engines automatically identify common phrases, and most engines give a higher ranking to pages in which your terms appear next to each other. To be sure, though, that you are only getting records with your terms adjacent to each other and in the order you wish, use quotation marks. Title Searching This is often the most powerful technique for getting to some highly relevant pages quickly.

It may also cause you to miss some good ones, but what you do get has an excellent chance of being relevant. All the major engines have this option, and most of them let you search titles by means of either menu options or prefixes see Figures 3. Most engines will let you accomplish the same thing using a prefix. For example, in Google, Yahoo! The use of the term, though, points out that you can use this approach to limit your retrieval to sites having a particular top-level domain, such as.

This strategy could be used to identify only Canadian sites that mention tariffs or to get only educational sites that mention biodiversity. Link Searching There are two varieties of link searching. In one variety, you can search for all pages that have a hypertext link to a particular URL; and in the other, you can search for words contained in the linked text on the page.

In the latter, you can see which webpages have the name of your organization as linked text. Either variety can be very informative in terms of finding out who is interested in either your organization or your website. It can be very useful for marketing purposes, and it can also be used by nonprofits for development and fundraising leads. Engines may let you look for links to an overall site or to a specific page within a site. If you want to search exhaustively for who is linking to a particular site, definitely use more than one search engine.

In link searching, the difference in retrieval is even more pronounced than in keyword searching. Language Searching Although all of the major engines allow you to limit your retrieval to pages written in a given language, they differ in terms of which languages can be specified. The 40 or so most common languages are specifiable in most of those engines, but if you want to find a page written in Esperanto, not all engines will give you that option.

If you find yourself searching by language, be sure to look at the various language options and preferences provided by the different engines, particularly if a non-Western character set is involved. Searching by Date Searching by date is one of the most obviously desirable options, and most major engines provide such an option. Unfortunately, it may not have much meaning. To get around this, engines may use the date when the page was last modified or the date on which the page was last crawled by the engine.

When searching webpages, keep this approximation in mind and do not expect much precision. In other databases an engine may provide, such as news or groups, the date searching may be very precise. Collections of statistics on a specific topic can sometimes be easily identified by limiting your retrieval to Excel files. Specifying file type may not be required very often, but at times it will be very useful. Boolean Search Options In the context of online searching, Boolean searching basically refers to a process of identifying those items such as webpages that contain a particular combination of search terms.

It is used to indicate that a particular group of terms must all be present the Boolean AND , that any one of a particular group of terms is acceptable the Boolean OR , or that if a particular term is present, the item is rejected the Boolean NOT. These relationships are represented by the dark areas in the Venn diagrams shown in Figure 3. Because all major search engines automatically AND your query terms if you do not specify otherwise , any time you just enter two or more terms in a search box, you are implicitly requesting an AND even if you do not realize it.

Varieties of Boolean Formats As with title, site, and other search qualifications, Boolean usually provides two options for indicating what you want: All major engines now automatically AND your terms, so when you enter: For example, Google and Yahoo! Since Google and Yahoo! In a typical search, if you search a second engine, it may significantly increase the number of unique records you find. Searching a third and fourth engine can also yield records not found by the first engines. Therefore, if you need to be exhaustive—if it is crucial that you find everything on the topic—do your search in a second and third engine.

At the end of this chapter, you will see why metasearch engines are not the solution to this problem. R ESULTS PAGES One of the most useful things a searcher can do is to take a few extra seconds to look not just at the titles of the retrieved webpages, but also at the other things included on results pages and at the details provided in each record. Most engines provide some potentially useful additional information besides just the webpage results. At the same time they search their web database, they may search the other databases they have, such as news, images, video, and directories.

You may find some news headlines that match your topic; a link to images, audio, or video on your topic; background information; and more. One thing offered on search results pages by all of the major engines is a spell-checker. If it was indeed a mistake, just click on the alternate suggestion to correct the problem.

Be aware of Sponsor Results or Sponsored Links on results pages. Most major engines keep these sponsor sites easily identifiable, for example, by putting them on a blue background or off to the side of the page. When placed at the top of the results pages, though, they may send less experienced users to an ad while thinking they have gone to a regular search result. Also look closely at the individual web results records. If you are not aware of these links, you may miss relevant records from that site. If a page is in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, or another language, in some cases, you may see such a link attached to the record.

Click on it to receive a machine translation of the page. The translation program cannot translate words displayed on a page that are actually images rather than text. Many purists flagrantly reject the use of these translation tools. That attitude, it can be argued, is analogous to saying I should never attempt to read a German newspaper article because my own translation will have a lot of mistakes, that being totally ignorant of the content of the page is better than having just a general idea of what is being said. In most cases, signing up for these free accounts requires your divulging only a bare minimum of personal information sometimes just an email address.

Considering the benefits these account provide, it is worth the few seconds it takes to sign up. Some are geographic focusing on sites from one country , and some are topical focusing on a particular subject area. To locate examples of these, check out the following category in Open Directory dmoz. With one search, you get results from several engines.

Considering the usefulness of using more than one engine, the metasearch idea seems compelling—and it is indeed a great idea. However, the reality is often something else. You may find that you like a particular metasearch engine and have legitimate reasons for using it, but it is important to note some particularly important shortcomings. First, though, it should be noted that this section addresses the free sites on the web that allow the searching of multiple engines. There are also metasearch programs software that can be purchased and loaded on your computer to help you search multiple engines.

These client-side programs may do a more complete job, but they involve downloading and eventually purchasing a program and sometimes involve several more steps to get to your results. Free metasearch engines on the web are numerous. New ones frequently appear, and older ones disappear just as quickly. They can cover portions of a large number of search engines and directories in a single search, and they can sometimes be useful in finding something very obscure. However, each metasearch engine usually presents one or more and sometimes all of the following drawbacks: They may not cover most of the larger search engines.

If you have a favorite metasearch engine, see if it covers Google, Yahoo! Most only return the first 10 to 20 records from each source. Most search syntax does not work. Some metasearch engines let you search by title, URL, and so on, but most do not. Some do not even recognize even the simplest syntax: Some present paid listings first. T HE B ASICS Also, by now you know that on search engine results pages, the additional content presented besides just the listing of websites can often be very valuable.

You usually lose this with metasearch engines. Where metasearch engines can provide definite value is when they truly offer something above and beyond what you get in a single regular search engine. An example of this kind of feature is the subject clustering of results provided by Clusty clusty. If you find that a metasearch engine meets your needs, use it. However, they are not the solution for an exhaustive—or even a moderately extensive— search.

With these, you can just enter a brief statement in the main search box and click on search, and an answer will appear at the top of the results page. Some of these will be mentioned in Chapter 4, but for a fuller list, take a look at www. All of the desktop search programs provided by major engines have fast search speed virtually instantaneous , and all index hundreds of basic file types documents, images, text, PDFs, etc.

None search every word of every file on a computer. Desktop search programs differ as to how many and exactly which file types are indexed, which email clients are indexed, how much control you have over what gets indexed, what searching options are provided, whether they provide quick previews of the files in your desktop search results, how they are integrated into your web searches, whether your network drives are indexed, and whether they provide an enterprise version for your entire organization to use.

If there is any consensus among reviewers regarding desktop programs from the major engines, the favorites are either Yahoo! Give one or both a try. It can save you hours when searching for lost files. This chapter, however, provides detailed profiles of each of the top search engines. The descriptions give an overview of the service, take a look at the features on the home page and advanced search page, and call attention to any notable additional features. For some features, such as news and image databases, only a brief mention is given in the profile because the subject is covered in detail in a relevant chapter elsewhere in the book.

As you use these engines, expect to occasionally find new features, new arrangements of home pages, and other changes.