information on smart searching, search technology current trends and new technologies

1. <smart searching!>

3. about search engines

5. some of the key search engines…

6. traditional search technologies Early search engines were simple directories of data to url As the internet grew meta tags, meta data, titles and keywords were used to help search engines identify and keep track of the growing volumes of information in more complex databases. With current levels of data, search engines like Google use ever more complex algorithms to rank the results based on a range of factors including relevance and popularity(from monitoring sites like Alexa or digg like votes as yahoo buzz). There is a trend to make search results more visually rich. Searches like tafiti combine graphic technologies like silverlight to allow results to be stacked and data dragged to a pasteboard. Some search engines like dogpile combine results from several individual search engines like ask,google and yahoo into a single set of results.

7. With the current volume of data attempts are now being made to improve the quality not quantity of search results. Sites like Clusty, use high quality text clustering and labelling and linguistics to second guess what users are really looking for. Recognising the difference between “a drive by killing” and “making a killing”. Sites like Mahalo, a “human search engine” are concentrating on having real people write result pages with meaningful explanations examples, tips and links. Sites like Wikipedia provide a single source for user generated information. Wikia search is a sort of hybrid search engine with social content. True knowledge is an attempt to create semantic search engine that will answer real questions, like when was Elvis born or what age is Madona newer search technologies

9. the problem with search engines

11. can’t find the information you want?

13. can’t seeing the wood for the trees?

15. target your search

17. <welcome to the revolution!> pick the right target

19. improve your accuracy

21. Use SITE: to limit your search to specific websites Example: Site:co.uk travel would only find travel sites with.co.uk urls. Site:microsoft.co.uk sharepoint Use inURL: to limit it to site with the term in the url. Example: inURL:baltic would find only sites with baltic in the actual url Use filetype:<type> to limit it to site with the term in the url. Example: filetype:pdf baltic would find only pdf documents refering to baltic. specify operands

23. cutting through the to the results

25. ©®™ Most information on the internet will be protected by copyright, intellectual copyright or trademark. Generally its Ok to use for personal research but should not be reused without permission.. can you reuse the data you find? Creative commons is a really good way to allow people to see just what they can do with your information, and for you to be sure what you can do with theirs.

26. staying on target

30. More useful sources of information…

31. the future of searching…

35. <contributions> Most of the data in this document was found using search engines, And social bookmarking sites. Much of the content came from online communities and Documents shared using creative commons.. <Produced by> david coxon www.davidcoxon.com

36. its about finding not searching... targeted searches yield quality results