Further explorations of the world of search engines.
Last week we began to learn to distinguish between the various popular search engines. This week we'll continue to do that: exploring two other search genres: metasearch engines and web portals. We'll also pause to look at the one or two specially search engines. The secret to effective use of the web is to search intelligently, so the ratio of "hits" (locatiojns which provided useful information) to '"misses" increases.
Metasearch Engines
The prefix, meta, means above or beyond. a Meta-search Engine connects to a number of search engines simultaneoulsy, and returns results from all of them. This can be useful, as no search engine references the entire internet. Metasearch engines can ge great time-savers. They are newer tools, and each of them searches using different search engines and different formulae for returning results.
I'd like to have you practice with each of the ones below. As you did for January 30, try them in both the regular and advanced search methods. Note what parameters each allows you to set, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each of them. When you're finished, write a few notes of evaluation in your Commonplace Book.
Never let it be said that Web Developers lack a sense of humor. Dogpile could have a number of interpretations, but if one observes the shape of the letter O one gets a sense of the meaning intended by the developers.
My graduate French, which I passed (barely) informed me that beaucoup means "many". And this labor of love searches many places and returns many results.
The developer of Pandia says, "What is the most effective way of searching the Internet? Not one search engine covers more than 30% of the entire Web, so often you have to use more that just one search engine to find what you are looking for. When using the Pandia Metasearch Engine you are searching several search sites at once." But he also goes on to say that ultimately one should search the individual search engines as well. One technique. try one or more metasearch engines first. See which search engine produced the most useful results, and continue searching there.
Web Portals
All search engines and metasearch engines have one thing in common; they employ robot programs to surf the web, catalogue words using certain proprietary formulas to return and catalog the information they find. The items are listed in sequences determined by other forumula--perhaps the most recently updated first, for example, or the one which is most "popular" in terms of web traffic generated to the site.
Web Portals, however, are monitored and shaped by human intervention. They may begin with a robot probe, but human "experts" act as gateways, separating the significant from the insignificant. The plus to using portals is that the true garbage is pre-screened for you. The minus is that a bank of human researchers can only do so much per day, so one sacrifices quantity for quality. This may be o.k. HOWEVER, there might be some quality out there which still hasn't come to the attention of the folks manning the portals, AND different "experts" may have different ideas on what is and what is not important.
Ditto offers the ability to search for illustrations in formats which can be imported to your own computer for use as illustrations in word processed documents. Sometimes searching for illustrations is a good way to find relevant text materials, as well.
Alta Vista provides several different search capabilities, including the ability to search for illustrations and sound files. It also allows the resarcher to select to include photographs, graphics, clip art, or all three in the search results.
Specialized Search Engines.
Specialized search engines are under increasing pressure from the larger general search engines, and it may be that this genre will ultimately not survice. Some have gone out of business: others have changed their business plans. The two below are still useful.
For the moment, all I want you do to is familiarize yourselves with the websites represented by these logos.. Click on each, bookmark the site, add it to your MURL site, and you'll have done enough for the moment. We'll be returning to these as a part of the bibliography project. Some of these are for profit sites, others are labors of love provided by Librarians, some of the most selfless people in the world.
