by Lecia Kaslofsky on August 4, 2010
When does it make sense to go beyond Google or Bing for your search?
A bunch of new, cool search engines are cropping up with different strengths. To decide which one to try, let’s use the analogy of looking for a good movie to see. If any of you tried, you know searching Google with “What movie should I see?” isn’t going to get you results fast.
There are three ways to go. You could:
1) Call/email a friend or group of friends who would know what movie you’d like
2) Post the question somewhere for a big community to opine (like on Facebook)
3) Search a specialized site (for movies, sites like www.rottentomatoes.com or www.fandango.com)
These categories are the same three ways to look at the other search engines.
CATEGORY ONE: Reaching out to targeted person or persons who would know
- www.vark.com: Aardvark is good for finding a certain individual (or expert) who might know the answer to your question.
- www.hunch.com: Hunch uses your preferences and profile to find someone who likely shares your tastes.
CATEGORY TWO: Reaching out to a broad community for a more diverse response. This format has been around awhile with sites like:
This is the area with the most growth right now. Front runners Quora and Facebook Questions are both still in beta testing but look promising.
CATEGORY THREE: Searching a specialized site. If you don’t know one already, these general search engines help you figure out where to dig down.
- www.duckduckgo.com Has a feature called !Bang that helps narrow your search by category. For example, searching !movies leads you directly to specialized sites to search like fandango.com. Works for many categories like !travel or !handbags for example.
- www.blekko.com Still in beta testing. Blekko has slashtags that limit your search to websites that will most likely have what you’re looking for. There are preset slashtags (/movies) and you can make your own (/startups).
by Lecia Kaslofsky on June 17, 2010
In the early days of the web – before search engines, can you imagine?? – you found information by going to web pages that provided links to all sorts of things – the links were grouped by category. (For a great book on the history of search on the web, check out The Search by John Battelle). Categorization or classification as a way of organizing information goes back to Aristotle in the 4th century B.C. It has been the main method of organizing – and therefore finding – information in the modern world.
What does this mean for you? Let’s look back:
Classification: How would your subject be classified? Try using the classification of what you are looking for as your search.
For example, let’s say you are looking for your ancestors. You know they were originally from India but moved to England at the turn of the century. You know their last name was Patel. A Google search of Patel in England isn’t going to get you anywhere. Instead, try taking a step back and thinking how you would categorize what you are looking for. How about “indian immigration to england.” The very first link is useful: Moving Here, a website with online databases of 200,000 documents and other resources about immigration to England that was put together by U.K.’s National Archives and 30 archives, libraries and museums. I bet Moving Here could help you.
Indexes: Our now-common method of keyword searching is relatively new but indexing information by keywords has been around for a long time – major publications like the New York Times would print an annual Index of subject matters, important names and events to help researchers find the right date and page number of relevant articles. That’s a form of keyword. These indexes are warehoused at libraries and are very useful when looking for information older than 20 years ago.
Try the Library of Congress or the library of the largest town near what you’re looking for.
Morgues: Also, newspapers and magazines used to keep “clip files” or “morgue files” of subject matters, people and events to assist researchers. It’s worth calling a publication that covers your subject matter or its location to see if the publication still has morgue files. Some have donated their morgue files to libraries but hopefully someone at the publication can tell you that. For example, Newsweek has donated its pre-electronic files to The Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.
Happy Hunting!