Task Objective
To gain an understanding of the application of and differences between: search engines, web directories, databases and metasearchers…
Process
1. Use the most commonly used internet search engine and do a search with words of your choosing.
- record the first hit and number of hits in your learning log
2. Using copernicus or similar, set it up to search at least three search engines (including one that will search the ‘deep web’) and repeat eactly the same search
- record the number of hits in your learning log, and compare to your first search. What differences did you notice? Why? Which search, on first glance gave you the most promising results?
3. save at least the first 5 hits of both searches.
Task Outcomes
First Seach using Google
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,310,000 for Mountain Biking Europe. (0.23 seconds)
First five hits:
- Mountain Biking Europe | Mountain Bike Europe - Spain
Search for a mountain bike tour or mountain bike trail in Europe. Discover downhillmountain biking, extreme mountain biking and mountain bike treks in …
www.mountainbikingholidays.net/europe/index.php – 45k - Cached - Similar pages
- EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails | TRAILSOURCE™
EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails Source is an adventure travel guide to the best 2000mountain biking trails and singletracks in over 75 countries around the …
www.trailsource.com/scripts/ two.asp?TYPE=BIKE&CONTINENT=EUROPE - 21k -Cached - Similar pages
- Mountain Biking in Europe
The Trento Bike Pages describe rides throughout Europe (mainly in Italy, … Reports onmountain biking in the Trentino region: from Thomas Driemeyer (in …
mtb.live555.com/mtb-europe.html – 14k - Cached - Similar pages
- Amazon.co.uk: Mountain Biking Europe (Footprint Activity Guide …
Amazon.co.uk: Mountain Biking Europe (Footprint Activity Guide) (Footprint Activity Guide) (Footprint Mountain Biking Europe: Tread Your Own Path): Chris …
www.amazon.co.uk/ Mountain-Biking-Europe-Footprint-Activity/dp/190609831X – 153k -Cached - Similar pages
- BIKE-ROX - Mountain Biking, Biking Holidays, Biking Europe …
Romania activity tours, cycle in Romania, Hiking Romania mountains, outdoor tours like Romania mountain bike tour, biking, trekking in Romania, …
www.bike-rox.ro/ – 36k - Cached - Similar pages
Next Search using Inquisitor (Meta Search tool)
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,300,000 for Mountain Biking Europe. (0.23 seconds))
First Five hits.
- Mountain Biking Europe | Mountain Bike Europe - Spain
Search for a mountain bike tour or mountain bike trail in Europe. Discover downhillmountain biking, extreme mountain biking and mountain bike treks in …
www.mountainbikingholidays.net/europe/index.php – 45k - Cached - Similar pages
- EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails | TRAILSOURCE™
EUROPE Mountain Bike Trails Source is an adventure travel guide to the best 2000mountain biking trails and singletracks in over 75 countries around the …
www.trailsource.com/scripts/ two.asp?TYPE=BIKE&CONTINENT=EUROPE - 21k -Cached - Similar pages
- BIKE-ROX - Mountain Biking, Biking Holidays, Biking Europe …
Romania activity tours, cycle in Romania, Hiking Romania mountains, outdoor tours like Romania mountain bike tour, biking, trekking in Romania, …
www.bike-rox.ro/ – 36k - Cached - Similar pages
- Mountain Biking in Europe
The Trento Bike Pages describe rides throughout Europe (mainly in Italy, … Reports onmountain biking in the Trentino region: from Thomas Driemeyer (in …
mtb.live555.com/mtb-europe.html – 14k - Cached - Similar pages
- Mountain Bike Europe, Trails, Downhill, Cross Country, Touring …
Free for and By the Mountain Bike Community – Join Our Community and Share your Experience, Search our Information and Ask Your Questions, WebCam, GPS, …
www.mountainbikeeurope.com/ – 53k - Cached - Similar pages
To be honest I really couldn’t see much evedence of inquisitor in the second search result set – it seemed much that it returned a high volume of results, but of medium to low quality after the first 10 or so.
I also tried a couple of popular metasearch sites Dogpile and Clusty given I’d had no real success so far…
Dogpile searches the ‘top 4′ (Google, Ask, Yahoo and Windows Live) combining the results in an easy to use format
Clusty on the other hand searches a number of search engines and directories, but NOT Google or Yahoo. It’s other point of difference is that it displays results traditionally, but also sections them into sub categories like so….
Clusty gave the top 180 results of at least 349,000 retrieved for the query Mountain Biking Europe and I did observe a much higher quality of result compared to the previous 2 searches (which seemed to digress alot to things like singles cycling holidays in Hawaii after about the 10th search result)
Dogpile didn’t provide data on search result numbers, however it did give a very good selection of sites back, including many not previously returned. Like Google after a while relevance started to get pretty loose, but this was less of an issue given that the number of good returns seemed more than anyone could ever want (is that a dangerous statement when disucssing the web or what!!!?)
In conclusion, there dosn’t seem to be any one panacea for me – let alone the millions of other users out there. I think I will definately continue using Dogpile, although I wish that like Google, I could restrict my search to just pages from my local area… ever so handy when you’re just looking for a dentist…
I think I would use Clusty too, as I loved it’s ‘clustering’ feature for further defining all that noise. Although because it does not search the majors like Google and Yahoo, I’ll need to use it more before I am a total convert.
I feel that advanced internet users need to have a good grasp of differing search technologies as (presently anyway) in order to properly leverge them, one needs to treat them as a ‘toolkit’. Although not everything I tried did it ‘all’ I definately feel as though I could orchestrate a much better search now.
As for Inquistor, Acid Search and all the other Mac clients I tried… I’m disspointed they ddn’t work out for me, especially given the rave reveiws that they get. I’ll have to get under the hood and see whether there was perhaps some user error there.
August 28, 2008 at 3:00 pm |
[...] Go to the author’s original blog: Module 4 Tasks – Search Engines [...]
August 31, 2008 at 4:59 am |
good trick buddy