The main components of the lecture I found useful, informative and interesting were:
- Difference between search engines and directories.
- Certain useful internet search tips.
Search Engines are a web based application program that crawls the internet, creating indices of websites in which sites are usually indexed by keywords.
Problems with Search Engines include
- Misuse of the page/ score ranking system
- The inclusion of current broken links in a list of results to query
- Building enormous indices that include irrelevant and outdated results to the user.
Directories
- Directories are “human edited”.
- Web pages submitted to directories are reviewed and added by manual submission, to ensure quality.
- Opposed to search engines which automatically submit web pages, directories do this in order to stop information which is misleading.
Useful Search Tips I found interesting and helpful.
- Guessing a location of the source
- Think about and write down what you exactly want.
- Use advanced search function and Boolean operators, to expand or contract the search.
Tutorial
In the tutorial Gary checked our Blogs and gave us feedback on the structure of a Blogg, what we need to include and exclude in our Blogs in order to achieve high marks. Gary just presented on the projector a brief description on what was to be done in workshop five. The first task was to go to the Monash university website and document in our blogs a couple of tips on how to limit and specify infromation wanted within the search engine searches. The second task was then to do a internet quiz at home. Then Gary told us to explain in our logs how we retrieved the information, to find the anwsers in the quiz.
Workshop 5 - Using Search Engines
Task 1: Was to go to the Monash university website www.monash.com./spidap.html section on search engines and tutorials and read the information. After the web page was read we had to document four strategies in which would help structure a good search in our learning log.
- Using a directory rather than a search engine such as “Google Directory”.
Web directories are a subject-tree style catalogue that organizes the Web into major topics, including Arts, Business and Economy etc. Beneath each of these topics is a list of subtopics of those is another list becoming more general to the more specific.
- Use the search tips section within your browser.
This may help you enter keywords in a particular way to help expand or compact your search.
- Refining your search.
Advanced search refining options some of the possibilities include the ability to search on more than one word, to get more or compact the weight to of the number of hits you get, able to search on proper names, on phrases. Search engines allow you to use Boolean operators to refine your search. These are the logical terms AND, OR, NOT.
- Query by example.
Query by example helps to find similar sites to the ones that come up on your initial search list. Essentially what you're doing is telling the search engine, give more similar to the topic and article than the original one.
Task 2 : was complete the online internet quiz from the webpage www.siteseen.co.uk/questions/historytivia/
Once we had finished were to produce a screenshot of the successful completion of the History Trivia online Quiz that we had participated in.
Task 3 : was to list the strategies that helped to locate the answers in the quiz and there effectiveness.
The strategies I had used to locate my answers were:
- Typing information into basic google search
Worked well for relatively basic questions such as birth dates etc, but questions with multiple subject keywords I struggled to find in the list any sites with the straight up information.
- Typing information into google advanced search
The advanced search function was very good in helping me to search multiple subject keywords. The first useful tool was typing the keywords into this exact wording or phrase helped to compact the search and search for the full subject phrase. Second useful tool was using Boolean operators such as “OR” to expand the search. The last useful tool in advanced search was excluding words using any of these unwanted words search bar.
- Using Google Directory to locate information.
Using the google directory I had assumed from reading before that only information manually clarified on this search directory would exist so the results would be more reliable. This was true as only the reliable, factual information came up on the screen as the first entries when keywords were put in.
- Used the Yahoo search engine.
Got stuck on finding the information I was looking for one of the questions so I used an alternative search engine. This was thought of by me because I was told that each search engine although does contain some of the same information, different search engines contain different webpage’s and information sources also, so I thought I would be able to find a section of information for the answer using a different site.
What have I learnt from this module?
- Using a directory rather than a search engine for research on assessments. Knowing the information was manually clarified by the directory site before it is given the green light, will hopefully give me a more reliable and less misleading search result. This is opposed to a search engine searches which just come up with anything with the keyword(s).
- Using the advanced search to help expand and compact my search. In order to get exactly what I want or don’t want within my keyword subject search. Using such functions as the exact word or phrase, Boolean operators and excluding the words or phrase I am hopefully likely to get a list of searches relating to exactly what I want
- If all else fails use another search engine to track down information.
Readings
The first reading of week 5 is from the Virtual Salt website http://www.virtualsalt.com/howlook.htm. The Virtual Salt website written by Robert Harris takes a look at the types of information categories on the web, search tool types and search tips. Categories of information on the web is split into three the free visible web, the free invisible web and paid database over the web. Visible, free web pages can by found within search engines as invisible websites cannot and paid subscription databases require you to be part of a company or sign up to be able to use these databases as a username and password will be required. Search tool types consist of two they are search engines and directories. Search engines index a large proportion of webpage’s and when searched, “the spider” matches up certain keywords to particular webpage’s. Directories are human edited and contain less information than search engines, when information is searched only the highest quality information will be retrieved when a query is sent as it is hand picked. Some particularly good search tips include read the search tips provided by the search engine or directory, use these search tips to limit and specify your search, guess a location and, limit the keywords “and” “or” within the search to help to limit the amount of hits.
The second reading of week 5 is from the search engine optimisation website http://www.websight.net.au/search-engine-optimisation.asp. The search engine optimisation website is a website that conducts analysis determining if your small business for search engine optimisation. The search engine optimisation provides recommendations and reveals any issues that the developer can implement or you can ask the site to include in website optimisation. The fields that they go over to help optimise a small business website include keyword analysis, setting the benchmark which is the businesses current ranking for every relevant keyword phrase in there search results, search engine optimisation ,link popularity and measuring the websites progress.
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