Finding what you want…faster @FPL Search Engine Basics Finding what you want…faster December 28, 2018 Framingham Public Library

Who am I? Kara – Info and reference librarian Librarian since 2015 Framingham librarian since March 2018 What I’m reading right now: Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch Fludd by Hilary Mantel

What are we going to learn today? What is a search engine and how do they work? What are the most efficient ways to use search engines? How to recognize and interpret the enhanced features in popular search engines. Briefly - how to screen out the junk. While we will briefly touch on media/info literacy that’s not the point of today’s class.

What is a search engine? Search engines are tools that find keywords on the internet. Result order is largely determined by a preset formula – it’s not a value judgement. Google is a search engine, but so are Bing, DuckDuckGo, Baidu, Yahoo, and many others. Search engines and the internet are two different things.

Basic Terms Query: Your search words. Term: Your search words. Results: The answers you get after you hit ‘enter.’ Browser: A program used to access the internet, usually Chrome or Mozilla/Firefox.

How do search engines work? Search engines use crawlers (often called spiders) to trawl the internet, creating indexes of where different keywords can be found. Because the internet is always changing, these crawlers are always moving and updating their indexes. Each search engine uses a custom-built program to determine what their crawlers look for and how their results are ranked. Differing algorithms are the reason that different search engines will produce different results, even if they get the same search terms at the same time. When you perform a search, your search engine is actually searching it’s own index, not the live web.

Search Engines at Work Index produces results list Results are presented to the user Index is saved on the search engine server Search engine searches index User enters search terms Web crawler constantly trawls the internet to create and update an index of sites

Which Search Engine is Best? Google Lots of bells and whistles and one of the best algorithms (PageRank). Big Brother will be watching. Bing Has improved significantly in recent years. Nice new image searching functions.

Which Search Engine is Best? Yahoo Quality of results generally not as good but straightforward searches will be fine. Offers Advanced Search, but this can be hard to find. DuckDuckGo A stripped down option compared to the others but still performs very good searches. Won’t track you!

What can search engines access? Yes (usually) No (usually) Anything on the open internet Open access journal articles Shopping pages Current news Forms from the DMV and other government agencies Chat boards that don’t require a user login to read Anything behind a password or paywall Database contents* Full texts of books* Older news emails Anything that hasn’t been placed online

Searching with less frustration

Think like a computer Think like a computer: what words are most important? Use straightforward terms. Be as specific as possible (“bluenosed dolphin” might be better than “dolphin”). Words to leave out: a, and, the, it, etc. Capitalization usually does not matter. Think about how often you might use hand gestures or common phrases like “you know what I mean?” in normal conversation. Computers DON’T know what you mean! Be exact, be specific, and don’t assume the computer can make connections on it’s own. Google’s algorithms mean that it sometimes can, but in general assume the computer is a pedant who is going to take you at your literal word.

Think like a computer Drop suffixes in broad searches  “bird” not “birding.” Pay attention to AutoComplete suggestions, they may save you time. Specify the site you want to search. [food.com chicken] will search food.com for the word “chicken”

Natural language searching – not always the best This means searching like a human speaks. Natural language searching works for basic searches but it takes more time than necessary.

Use the right type of search Most of the big search engines will let you search for different categories like images and news. Use reverse image searching if you want to know where an image came from. Bing ‘s Visual Search allows searching within an image with a crop-style tool – not perfect but can be helpful.

Boolean Operators Not required, but can be helpful AND: Find this term AND this term (sometimes + works instead of AND). OR: Find at least one of these terms (can also use the bar |).

Boolean Operators Not required, but can be helpful NOT: Ignore anything that contains this word. FOLLOWED BY: This term must come directly after this term. Quotation marks: Find these words in this exact order. Parentheses: Find all these words, but not necessarily in this order.

Further Customizations Use the (+) sign to keep words that would normally be ignored. Asterisk (*) for fill-in-the-blank. Tilde (~) in front of a word to include synonyms (doesn’t work with all terms and doesn’t always work well).

Advanced Search: Google

Advanced Search

Advanced Search: Yahoo search.yahoo.com/web/advanced Form is very similar to Google, fill it out and hit enter.

Why is Google the most popular? PageRank (Google’s copyrighted algorithm) is tweaked and updated almost constantly so results can be better than other search engines. Google offers some specialized search result types that can help you find basic information faster. Some of the competitors have started to offer similar features.

Snippets and Suggestions - Google Snippets are results Google thinks might be helpful Suggestions are similar questions other people have asked that Google thinks you might want to know too

Health Information - Google

Health Information - DuckDuckGo

Weather - Google

Weather - Yahoo

Directions Note that different places at the entered address are suggested. Clicking on the Directions button while using a mobile device normally starts your directions app.

Calculator - Google

Calculator - DuckDuckGo

Dictionary - Google

Dictionary - Bing

Evaluating your results Understand what type of result you’re looking at. Determine where the result came from. Try to see how old the result is.

Organic Results and Local Search Results - Google Organic results, AKA normal results Local search results Discuss parts within each results type, and be careful to note that FPL did not create the Local Search Result and has no power over it’s content

Organic Results and Local Search Results - DuckDuckGo Looks very similar to Google but slightly less formatted, and local search results are actually pulled from other sites (Yelp in this case)

Check sources to evaluate results This result is clearly recognizable as being from the Audubon Society, both in the blue title link and the green URL below

How old is it? Not every search engine does this, and not every result will have a date noted – you may need to open a result to determine if it’s too old to be useful.

Further Evaluation – Generally trustworthy, but verify if unsure Domains ending in .edu Database content Direct-from-the-source info Domains ending in .gov Sources that have a lot to lose by being wrong News stories that have been reported by multiple major networks* Sources that are easy to pin down *The news can be wrong! Breaking news is more likely to be wrong, long-standing stories are more likely to be true.

Further Evaluation - Less trustworthy, always verify elsewhere Personal blogs “News” sites that are hosted on a blogging platform Tabloids (THE ONION is SATIRE) Things that seem too good to be true Opening times/hours etc. pulled from a secondary source Things found by clicking on a flashing sidebar Older news stories that aren’t reported anywhere else Sources that aren’t easily identified – whose words are you reading? Sources with nothing to lose from being wrong The caveat to all of these is what are you trying to learn? If you want to learn about people’s differing opinions on a topic then personal blogs are a great source. If you want information on a medical condition then something more verifiable is better, preferably a source that would be penalized for distributing bad information.

Further ways to check on suspect information Search for the names of the person who wrote the piece, or the people named in the piece See what else has been written about the issue in other places See what has been written about the source in other places Look at the author’s social media presence Verify the source’s credentials

Search Engine Optimization When a business constructs their website in such a way as to attract attention from search engines. Now a standard business practice. Consists of adding items such as keywords and phrases to pages – like any business tactic there is a wide range of skill and ethical standards.

Time to stump Google!