Compare Search Engines

Phil Bradley lists eight search engine comparison sites in a post on his blog. Enter your search terms and the site runs them against various search engines—you decide which is best. Most compare only two engines, but some do more.

Sites mentioned are: Blind Search, Bingandgoogle, Bingle, Tripleme, GrabAll, Scour, Searchboth, and Soovle. Personally, I like Blind Search best, but you decide.

URLs:
Bradley’s post: http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2009/06/search-engine-comparisons.html
http://blindsearch.fejus.com
http://www.Bingandgoogle.com
http://bingle.pwnij.com
http://www.tripleme.com
http://www.graball.com
http://www.scour.com
http://us.searchboth.net
http://www.soovle.com

INTERESTING NEW SEARCH ENGINE

Lexiquo is a linguistically-oriented search engine, originally written for the German language, but now available for French, English, Spanish and Italian. It automatically suggests alternate search words based on linguistic variations and parsing of your search terms. For example, using child in the search box will cause the software to suggest children. Its suggestions depend on the language you are using.

I’m not sure it’s better, but it sure is interesting.

URL: http://www.lexiquo.net

SEARCH ENGINE FOR BIOLOGY

Vadlo is a new search engine for the biological sciences. It was created by two biologists and takes it name from a large fig tree (why?). It consists of protocols, online tools, PowerPoint presentations, databases, software, and cartoons.

URL: http://www.vadlo.com/

GREAT NEW SEARCH ENGINE--MIDDLESPOT

Middlespot is a really neat new search engine. You enter a term (or terms) and you get both a list of hits and a mosaic of screen shots. If you click on the screen shot it takes you to the cite/site (unintentional pun). That in itself is nice, but what I like is that I found links that I'd never seen before. I searched on my name (of course) and on "one person library" and "solo librarian" and was amazed at the results.

There are other nice features, such as being able to store individual results on your personal workpad and share that workpad with others. It is sponsored, but the ads are very inconspicuous. That makes Middlespot free, which we all like. There's a tutorial slide show to help you get started but you don't really need it. The only negative I could find is that there's a limit of 75 citations per search, but if you don't find something in the first 75 hits, you're probably not going to find it anyway.

URL: http://www.middlespot.com/

HUMAN RIGHTS INFORMATION

“HuriSearch is the only comprehensive search engine specialised in human rights information. It targets persons working with or interested in human rights, who need powerful search tools to access up-to-date and relevant information including: human rights monitors and researchers, students and academics, diplomats and persons working in international organisations, politicians and journalists.”
There is direct access to the content of over 3000 human rights websites, with over three million indexed pages. It crawls every 24 hours for the Intergovernmental Organisations, National Human Rights Institutions, and Academic Institutions and every 8 days for the NGO collection. You can search by language, by organisation, or by country. The site “guarantees” that it is completely independent from political or commercial interests.

URL: http://www.hurisearch.org/

NEW, USEFUL MEDICAL SEARCH ENGINE

Microsoft has introduced Health Vault, its new consumer health search engine. As usual, I tested it with one my own conditions, “small fiber peripheral neuropathy.” I was amazed at the number and quality of resources found. (I usually get just one or two when I qualify it with “small fiber.”)
Results are from all sorts of sources: Wikipedia, answers.com, Medscape, medical journals, news articles, and more. There are also related books on Amazon, several of which I will get and read. And there are some pretty-well focused ads, too.
PLUS, you can save the search and specific articles in your own “vault,” which is supposedly secure and confidential. A nice touch—better than bookmarking.
I really like this site—let me know if you do, too.

URL: http://health.live.com/

THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY

I may have already blogged about this, but it is so neat that I have to do it again. The European Library website allows you to search over 150 million entries in thirty different national libraries, for books, posters, maps, sound recordings, video, etc.). The thirty libraries are Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

You can search the entire list; just maps, atlases and cartography; photographs, posters and images; portraits; children’s literature; digitized books; newspapers and periodicals; manuscripts; music collections; religion; scientific articles; thesis and dissertations; or collections from just one country.

What a wonderful resource!

URL: http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/index.html

ANOTHER LEGAL RESOURCE

"Mondaq is one of the most comprehensive electronic resource of professionals' knowledge and expertise...supplied directly by hundreds of the world's leading professional advisors from over 80 countries." It covers "commentaries, analysis and news updates concerning legislative, regulatory, and business issues related to international trade and investment..."

Categories include: antitrust/competition; banking and financial; construction, property and real estate; corporate/company, environmental and energy; European Union and international; finances, accounting, and consultancy; government and public sector; immigration; information technology and telecommunications; insurance and transport; intellectual property; labor and employment; litigation, arbitration and dispute resolution; media and entertainment; offshore; pharmaceutical, healthcare and life sciences; taxation law;and press releases.

Access and free personalized news alerts are free. It is supported by the "Big Four" accounting firms.

URL: http://www.mondaq.com/

A SHORT AND EASY SEARCH ENGINE TUTORIAL

Per and Susanne Koch of Pandia (Oslo, Norway) have put together a free tutorial on “how to explore the Net more efficiently.” This would be a good tool to use in your classes, or at least to refer to.

From the introduction: “The main problem is not that the search engines and the search directories find too little, but that they find too much. It is hard to uncover the needle in a list of 400,000 hits. That's why Pandia brings you this short and easy search eng

ine tutorial. To get the right answer, you must ask the right question. This Web search tutorial will tell you exactly how to do that! It will take you approximately 30 minutes to read the search engine tutorial through, and you will learn the essentials of Web searching in less than an hour. By improving your searching skills you will be able to find what you are looking for faster and more efficiently. How is that for an investment?”

I think that the best parts of the tutorial are the section on error codes and Pandia's 17 Recommendations for Net Searching. They are:

1. If you have a clear idea of what you are looking for, use a search engine first. If you are looking for general information on a broader topic start with a search directory.

2. Use nouns and objects as query words.

3. Be as specific as possible.

4. If you do not find what you are looking for, search for synonyms. Use the OR operator.

5. Check your spelling! Then check it again...

6. Be aware of alternate spellings or alternative words in various forms of English.

7. Use at least two keywords in a query.

8. Use phrases enclosed by quotation marks in order to reduce the number of results.

9. Use the AND or plus operator in order to reduce the number of hits.

10. Normally use quotation marks and capitals when searching for names.

11. Consider truncating words in order to find both singular and plural versions of nouns.

12. Put the main subject first.

13. State to yourself what you want to find. You might find it useful to write it down on a piece of paper in normal language. Pick out the keywords and use them (and relevant synonyms) in your search query.

14. Do not make your queries too complicated.

15. Consider using field searching to get more relevant hits.

16. Use several search services. Not one of them covers more than a part of the Net.

17. Read the help pages.Admittedly the basic rules are the same, but the variations will affect the results of your query.

URL: http://pandia.com/goalgetter/

TOP 25 WEB 2.0 SEARCH ENGINES

The people at Online Education Database have put this list together. “Some offer functionality that's slowly making its way into traditional search engines. Others further the attempt to traverse the invisible Web and index other previously unsearchable research sources. It is definitely worth trying them out.

URL: http://oedb.org/library/features/top-25-web20-search-engines