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Thursday 18 August 2011

Show your Meta-l

Zuula is very good.  I like the way that the site recognises that Google will probably give the best results, and then there are additional tabs to see results that Google did not find from Bing, then Yahoo and then all sorts of other search engines that I had never heard of.  Unlike Dogpile (what an unpleasant name) and Metacrawler, Zuula shows you explicitly what Google found and then what other search providers found on top of that.  Dogpile and Metacrawler just give you a heap of information from all of the big search engines.  I wasn't keen on Dogpile or Metacrawler, the interface is poor on both and they were more like Mama than anything else I've used recently with 'Obama' and 'Wheel of Fortune' featuring as wholly random, poor suggested searches...again (see yesterday's post).

Search algorithms are fascinating.

I hope that library school will shed some light onto how retrieval occurs, though I'm quite sure that much of it would pass me by (UCL is quite traditional so I'm not holding my breath in any case).  What I will learn is how to use search tools most effectively and how to pass on that expertise.  In my next job I will be using databases a lot, and effectively searching will be essential.  In my current job I search extensively through different online catalogues and repositories to find information from UK and international institutions for interlibrary loan.  Searching really makes you realise how important grammar is in your search, how refined terms are so much more effective and that small differences in your search terms have massive consequences for your results.

Any online search engine will find results.  What's important is to find quality results and here the search engine makes all the difference.  I still think Google is the best content finder, and will continue to default to that.  However meta search engines have opened my eyes and I will certainly go to Zuula in the next instance.

Refining your search and being specific is the most important thing.  I find it really interesting that on Zuula I searched for my name and result no.3 was my last.fm account (I actually forget it's there, I rarely use it and have never had it synced to itunes) and my username on last.fm is the same as my twitter name.  I then searched for my twitter name and Google only found my last.fm profile as result no.19.  I think this just goes to show that you really need to look closely at your results and not just assume that the best result is at the top of the list.

We also shouldn't be too reliant on search engines.  When you're looking for information for an essay you would look first on the library catalogue (search engine, by analogy) and will find useful results.  However, these results will not exclusively point you towards the best content, use of bibliographies from the books and articles you use (tags, links on websites, by analogy) will also play their part.  Good internet research cannot be confined to Google; there's so much more beyond.

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