Advanced web searching Information for Energy Group (IFEG) Spring Seminar

Energy Institute, London3rd April 2012

Karen Blakeman

RBA Information Services

Slides are available at http://www.rba.co.uk/as/

karen.blakeman@rba.co.uk

Twitter: @karenblakeman

http://www.rba.co.uk/

This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Energy Balance: 100 kW Hydroelectric Turbine at Mapledurham. http://ergobalance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/100-kw-hydroelectric-turbine-at.html

Trends in search

No longer straightforward text searching of web pages and documents

Localisation

Personalisation

Social

Mobile

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General search tools

Google - 91% of UK market, 67% US market

Bing/Yahoo– Yahoo now uses Bing's database and search algorithms for

web, image, video and news search

Alternatives to the "big two"– DuckDuckGo

– Blekko

– Yandex.com

Increasingly need to be aware of specialist tools

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Sanity checking Google

http://disruptivesearcher.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/sanity-checking-google/

“if I hadn’t searched across more than Google for data on a small, new company that I was asked to research recently, I

would have missed out on some very significant information that Google just wasn’t showing me.”

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How Google started

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11 November 1998The Internet Archive www.archive.org

How was Google different?

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Links (citations) a major part of ordering search results

http://www.seobook.com/learn-seo/collateral-damage.php

Where is Google now?

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2001 Revenues $86,426 thousandsNet Income $10,964 thousands

2011Revenues $37,905 millionsNet Income $9,737 millionshttp://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

2011 – 96% of revenues are from advertising Google is mass market consumer oriented. Serious researchers wanting reliable, structured search are a miniscule fraction of their customer base.

New How People Spend Their Time Online – Stephen's Lighthouse http://stephenslighthouse.com/2012/03/14/how-people-spend-their-time-online/

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How Google organises and sorts information

Has a primary index of higher "quality" documents and a secondary index. Only the primary index is searched when running straightforward searches. Secondary index comes into play with more complex searches and if a small number of results are found.

“Dear Bing, We Have 10,000 Ranking Signals To Your 1,000. Love, Google” http://searchengineland.com/bing-10000-ranking-signals-google-55473

Over 200 hundred “signals” and each may have over 50 variations11/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 9

How Google ranks and organises your results

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Google personalizes and tailors your results depending on your location, computer/device, browser, past searches, what you have looked at in the past, your +1s, your Google+ account, what you had for breakfast...and anything else it can find by rummaging around in your Google dashboard

To see what's in your dashboard log in to your Google account and go to http://www.google.com/dashboard/ Also see Google personalisation: web history isn’t the only problem http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2012/02/22/google-personalisation-web-history-isnt-the-only-problem/

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Google to Launch Third-Party Commenting Platform http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/03/27/google-to-launch-third-party-commenting-platform-to-rival-facebook/

Bing does it all as well!

– "Adaptive search"

– links with Facebook

Sign out of accounts, clear cookies, switch off history

DuckDuckGo – no tracking, no personalisation

Private browsing/No-tracking options in browser

Use Chrome Incognito (Chrome owned by Google!)

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Google's new Privacy Policy

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“Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.“

What I see on my screen for a search is not what you’ll see on yours.

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Google totally loses the plotFor 10 days in February 2011: coots = lions

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Google decides that coots are really lions– http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/02/12/google-decides-that-co

ots-are-really-lions/

Update on coots vs. lions– http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/02/21/update-on-coots-vs-lio

ns/

Coots = lions

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Three search tricks

These three techniques can change what Google (and other search engines) decides to give you and also the order of the results.

Repeat important search termscoots coots mating behaviour (found coots)

Change the order of your termsmating behaviour coots (found coots)

Change one of your search termscoots mating behaviour (found lions)coots courtship behaviour (found coots)coots mating ritual (found coots)

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Excluding pages containing words

Want to exclude pages containing a term? Place a - (minus sign) before the term

Use with care as may miss important material

Excluding lions from our bizarre coots search

coots mating behaviour –lions

gave us:

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Coots=lions was an extreme example of how Google can work

We think Google was doing the following:

- assumed a typing error or was running a mobile/smartphone predictive text algorithm (coots=cats)?

- ran an automatic variation/synonym search on cats?

- used a search frequency rule and found that lions mating behaviour was requested more than cats?

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Dear Google, stop messing with my search http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/08/dear-google-stop-messing-with-my-search/

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Google no longer looks for all of your terms in a page

See what Google sees

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Hover over a result and a "preview" of the page should appear to the right together with a Cached link – this is Google copy

“When you do a multi-term query on Google (even with quoted terms), the algorithm sometimes backs-off from hard ANDing all of the terms together.......it’s clear that people will often write long queries (with anywhere from 5 to 10 terms) for which there are no results. Google will then selectively remove the terms that are the lowest frequency to give you some results (rather than none)....Soft AND is a way to reduce the overall frustration and give the searcher something to examine (and with luck, a chance to reformulate their query).”

Dan Russell

http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/08/dear-google-stop-messing-with-my-search/#comments

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Verbatim

Forces Google to run an exact

match search. Run your search first

and then select Verbatim from the

left hand menu on your results page

Cannot be combined with time

options in the side bar

Google: Verbatim for exact match

search

http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/18/google-verbatim-for-exact-match-search/

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Google doing its own thing can be good

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Google's new(ish) social network Google Plus (Google+)

http://plus.google.com/

Google trying forcing people to create a Google+ profile http://marketingland.com/google-now-forcing-all-new-users-to-create-google-enabled-accounts-3912

Search Plus Your World (SPYW) referred to as Search+ now available in Google.com and is the default. Gives priority to content from people in your Google+ network if you are signed in to your account.

(And the next Google killer is….Google! http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2012/01/30/and-the-next-google-killer-is-google/)

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Search gets Social - Resistance is Futile

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Google.com [Not signed in to a Google account]

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Signed in to Google account on Google.com

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About 4,940,000 results (0.74 seconds) !!!

Google results side bar

These help you focus your search

"Everything" does NOT search everything

Vary depending on type of search e.g. web, news, images

Open up the "more" options to see everything

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Google side bars

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Images Videos News Books Blogs

Google Images

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Similar images

Google Images

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Google Images – use an existing image

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Click on the camera icon in the search box and then either enter the URL of an image or upload it

Flickr

Flickr Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons or advanced search screen http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/

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Images - other sources for Creative Commons and public domain images

Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/ (check the licence information towards the bottom of the page e.g. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thomas_Beach_by_Thomas_Beach.jpg)

MorgueFile.com http://www.morguefile.com/ - public domain

Geograph http://www.geograph.org.uk/ Creative Commons 2.0

Most of the images on US government web sites are public domain (but do check)

NASA http://www.nasa.gov/ - public domain11 April 2023 Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk 37

Google Video

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Not the same as Youtube

Video

Bing Videos

YouTube

Vimeo.com

DailyMotion.com

Blinkx - http://www.blinkx.com/

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Google News

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Google News Archive

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Silobreaker.com

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Silobreaker.com

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Google Books

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Blogs

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Related searches

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Translated foreign pages for a different perspective

Google suggests languages from context of search but you can choose your own

Your search is translated and the results are translated into your language

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Advanced searchUse search commands or Advanced Search screen

http://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search

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Problems finding information on a particular site?

Use Google's site: command

Can combine with date options in side menu

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Or if you are interested in UK academic reports

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Looking for a particular type of information for example statistics, research report, expert presentation?

Use the filetype: command

For statistics

world oil consumption filetype:xls world oil consumption filetype:xlsx world oil consumption filetype:xlsx OR filetype:xls

For government, research, industry reports

UK oil consumption forecasts filetype:pdf

For conference presentations or trying to locate an expert

renewable energy UK filetype:ppt renewable energy UK filetype:pptx renewable energy UK filetype:ppt site:ac.uk

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Numerical range search

Anything to do with numbers

Use advanced search screen

or

1st number followed by two full stops followed by 2nd number followed by unit of measurement (if applicable)

– Norway oil production forecasts 2012..2020

– Norway oil production forecasts 2012..2020 filetype:xls OR filetype:xlsx

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Advanced commands continued

inurl: for example

inurl:"carbon capture" targets

intitle: for example

intitle:"carbon capture" targets

asterisk (*) to search for terms separated by 1-5 words (may

have to use quotation marks)

solar * panels

"solar * panels"

Picks up solar PV panels, solar photovoltaic panels, solar

water heating panels

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Synonyms

Google often looks for variations of your terms but you cannot rely on it always happening

Use the tilde ~ before a term to look for what Google considers are synonyms

– ~energy will pick up oil, fuel, gas, electricity

No information/documentation on how synonyms are created

Very general, consumer oriented rather than scientific

Can be used with Verbatim

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Google alternatives - Bing and Yahoo

Yahoo now uses Bing's database and ranking

Many of the Advanced Search commands are similar to Google’s, see Search Tools Summary and Comparison http://www.rba.co.uk/search/compare.shtml

Most of the interesting developments and features are only available in the US version

Results tend to be more consumer/retail focused unless using advanced search features

Coverage not identical to Google’s - sometimes yields important unique content

Sometimes more up to date than Google

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DuckDuckGo

http://duckduckgo.com/

DuckDuckGo – silly name but a neat little search tool http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/07/duckduckgo-silly-name-but-a-neat-little-search-tool/

No tracking, no “filter bubble”

Commandssite: filetype: sort:date to sort by date (uses results from Blekko)

Syntax and keyboard shortcuts at http://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html

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Yandex.com

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Yandex.com advanced search

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Blekko

http://blekko.com/

slashtags for sorting by date (/date), searching for images (/images) and videos (/videos)

create your own to search your specified list of sites (similar to Google Custom Search Engines)

wind turbine electricity generation /karenblakeman/renewable

“Musings about librarianship: Using Blekko to search across thousands of library sites” http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2010/11/using-blekko-to-search-across-thousands.html 11/04/23 www.rba.co.uk 59

Blekko

Cannot do filetype, inurl, intitle searchesDrop down menu next to page in results list for

– site search (or use /site), similar pages (or use /similar), inbound links to the page (or use /links)

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Google Scholar

http://scholar.google.com/

A useful place to start your research or if you are looking for a specific paper but no source list, not comprehensive and omits many key scientific publications

Both peer-reviewed and un-reviewed articles, pre-prints, institutional repositories, references to books, citations

Does not use publishers’ meta data, author search unreliable, search on year of publication unreliable

Sometimes does strange things with your search terms but you can still use + before a term to force exact match search

Sometimes finds unique content

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Authors encouraged to claim papers

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Microsoft Academic Search

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/

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Microsoft Academic Search

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Microsoft Academic Search

Problems– coverage– sometimes gets the author completely wrong

“Will the Real Scott Wilson Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up”–

http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/will-the-real-scott-wilson-please-stand-up-please-stand-up/

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M Edwards should be Martin Edwards not Maria-Benedicta Edwards

Mendeley.com

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Mendeley.com

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Google Public Data Explorer

http://www.google.com/publicdata/

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Statistical Review of World Energy 2011 | BP http://www.bp.com/sectionbodycopy.do?categoryId=7500&contentId=7068481

Energy Export Databrowserhttp://mazamascience.com/OilExport/

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GasTrends databrowser http://mazamascience.com/Energy/GasTrends/

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Department of Energy and Climate Changehttp://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/energy_stats/energy_stats.aspx

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RESTATS

https://restats.decc.gov.uk/cms/welcome-to-the-restats-web-site/

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OFFSTATShttp://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/

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OFFSTATShttp://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/

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Priced industry and market research

Aggregators may not be comprehensive– use aggregators as an index to see who is publishing on your

topic, for example

http://www.marketresearch.com/

http://www.mindbranch.com/

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/

http://www.alacrastore.com/

http://www.reportbuyer.com/ (go to Energy and Utilities)

For emerging markets http://www.securities.com/

Many sites specialising in energy reports - just search on energy market research reports

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LinkedIn.com

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LinkedIn.com

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http://search.twitter.com/

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Topsy.com

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Icerocket.com

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Paper.li - create your own newspaper

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Paper.li – individual Twitterstreamhttp://paper.li/karenblakeman

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Paper.li – keyword http://paper.li/karenblakeman/1321447614

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Create your own Google custom search engine

http://www.google.com/cse/

For– regularly searched sites

– selected sites on a subject or type of organisation

Cannot include password protected sources or sites where you have to fill in a form to access the information

Information on setting up a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE)

http://www.rba.co.uk/as/GoogleCustomSearchEngines.doc

Google's blog on custom search http://googlecustomsearch.blogspot.com/

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1. Think about the type of information you are looking for – news, statistics, experts

2. Get to know the options in Google's sidebar

3. Get to know the advanced search commands for example site: filetype: intitle: numeric range

4. Get to know the alternative search tools and use them!

5. Keep up to date with changes to search tools and in particular Google

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Keeping up to date

Inside Search http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/

Official Google Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

Google Scholar Blog http://googlescholar.blogspot.com/

Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com/

Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/

Boolean Black Belt-Sourcing/Recruiting http://www.booleanblackbelt.com/

Karen Blakeman’s Blog http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/

Phil Bradley's weblog http://philbradley.typepad.com/

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