You, too, can become a "Google-dork"! Here are the highlights in list form:
Google’s dictionary expands – dictionary cards now have word origin, translate, usage over time
Google Autocomplete - if you type the name of a product or service, type "vs", then stop typing and wait for Google to fill in a list of search suggestions, you'll see what product comparisons other Google searchers were making.
Snipr.com/gdork14 – provides link to governmental warning page, "Malicious Cyber Actors Use Advanced Search Techniques", but it also provides a list of the "dangerous" search techniques that others have tried.
If you change the order of search words, you'll get different results.
Ocean fishing acidification
Vs
Acidification fishing ocean
You'll also get significantly different results when using "natural language" queries vs. when you're not:
What is the meaning of life
The meaning of life
Meaning of life
Millionshort.com eliminates the top 100 to 1 million sites so you can see more obscure sites that match your search terms.
Google Now is a phone app that looks at your Google calendar, Gmail, search history on phone and automatically provides: Translations, currency, next appointment, time to drive to office, nearby attractions, weather - trying to predict what you will search for.
Bates asks whether librarians can provide similar information, learning about patrons and giving them what they need before they ask for it, providing helpful and meaningful information?
To find information from trusted sources:
In Wikipedia – look at the external links at the end of articles.
In Bing only, searching for LinkFromDomain:msf.org ebola retrieves pages linked-to from Doctors Without Borders (msf.org) that mention ebola. Bing also lets searchers find pages that link to a filetype: for example, search for contains:mp3, contains:xls
Gwittr.com allows searchers to learn about influencers & their influencers (subject experts – find out who they retweet, what links they share, what they hashtag, how much they share)
To find LinkedIn “hidden” updates, mouse over blue “Send a message” button, then choose “View recent activity”
Tineye.com and Bing’s Image Match allows searchers to look for similar images (to find out: Is anyone using our photos? Did they pick up on our press release?)
Zanran looks for images on web pages and extracts text surrounding the image (a way to find graphs, etc. with statistical information)
Shothotspot.com allows searches for places to take a good picture
Thingful.net lists where people have tagged "the Internet of things"
Ms. Bates' book, Building & Running a Successful Research Business: A Guide for the Independent Information Professional, was one of my textbooks in library school.
ReplyDeleteI was impressed with her presentation - a lot of good information and a lively presentation style.
DeleteDon
Interesting stuff! Is the difference in world placement and results due to the algorithim that search engines use? Do they prioritize word order or anything like that?
ReplyDeleteThe presenter mentioned that Google is having to take into account the increasing number of natural language queries (e.g. searching for "What is the meaning of life?") in the form of spoken questions to smart phone personal assistants.
ReplyDelete