5. GOALS OF THE SEMINAR Understand the nature of the web. Learn about the different types of search engines and how they function. Discover which search engines are appropriate for your varying needs. Learn how to evaluate websites. Learn how to bookmark websites for later retrieval.
6. Goals of the seminar (cont.) Be able to understand and follow these directions: “Begin with a phrase search, progress to using Boolean and proximity operators with field to top-level and geographic domain limiters, and end with link checking of a selected result. These link checks will then be further limited using the Boolean AND operator with a keyword/phrase and a top-level domain.”
10. Remember… When completeness is important,searching requires the use of several tools. (Require your students to use at least three separate search tools when researching a topic)
12. General-purpose search engines Provides text-matched searching of its own crawler-built database of text-indexedWeb pages. Search results are ranked according to internal relevance-ranking algorithms. Provides searchable access to the text of millions of freely accessible Web pages. Ex: google, yahoo, bing, gigablast, cuil
13. General-purpose search engines Why are general-purpose search engines so popular? Ease-of-use Convenient Time-saving Availability of full-text
14. General-purpose search engines Problems associated with using general-purpose search engines exclusively: TMI (too much information) Lots of irrelevant or inappropriate information Many results may be of limited use Advanced features are not used Tendency to look only at first ten results Access is preferred over quality
16. Meta-search engines A search tool that does not have its own database. Sends queries to several other search engines and then complies the results on a single screen or in multiple frames or windows. Ex: clusty, dogpile, surfwax, copernic
17. Meta-search engines Benefits of meta-search engines: Searches in many different search engines, and thus is not tied down to one database. Enhance coverage and relevancy of the search. Can provide more up-to-date results Some meta-search engines eliminate duplicate records. Some meta-search engines sort pages into topics.
19. Database & directories search engine A classified listing of Web sites, in which brief records for sites are placed within an appropriate hierarchical taxonomy. Classification of sites is typically done by human editors, and the sites are searchable by category names, site titles, and brief site descriptions. Ex: google scholar, ipl, dmoz, vlib, yahoo directory
20. Database & directories search engine Benefits of databases and directories Search results are generally a lot more reliable because classification is done by human editors. Easier to find more relevant information Information found in databases may not be indexed by general-purpose (and meta-) search engines. Hierarchical layout allows for targeted searching.
