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

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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!

10. 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 s
Anything that hasn’t been placed online

11. Searching with less frustration

12. 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.

13. 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”

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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 |).

17. 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.

18. 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).

19. Advanced Search: Google

20. Advanced Search

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

22. 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.

23. 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

24. Health Information - Google

25. Health Information - DuckDuckGo

26. Weather - Google

27. Weather - Yahoo

28. 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.

29. Calculator - Google

30. Calculator - DuckDuckGo

31. Dictionary - Google

32. Dictionary - Bing

33. 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.

34. 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

35. 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)

36. 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

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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

41. 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.

42. Time to stump Google!