[Web4lib] Google Discussion

[Mary Lou Cumberpatch]

Hi: I think discussions of search engines are very useful for this list.
I've learned a lot about Google from the list discussions; I can now
help our patrons and staff understand better how to use it.

Best,

Mary Lou Cumberpatch

"Sloan, Bernie" wrote:
> 
> Jennifer Heise said:
> 
> "...instead of wasting all our time ranting about how a screwdriver is
> not a paint can opener, why don't we talk about where to get a paint can
> opener?"
> 
> I always use a screw driver to open paint cans. Works just fine.
> 
> Google is the 800-pound gorilla of search engines and there are a whole
> lot of people who think of it as "one stop shopping" for their
> information needs. I think it's a useful exercise to explore what it
> does well, and what it doesn't do well, and what it doesn't do at all.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
> [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Jennifer A. Heise
> Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2005 12:36 PM
> To: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Google limit of 1,000 results
> 
> > Sure. Given that Google's ranking algorithm tends to weight pages
> > that important sites point to more heavily than others, there are
> > times when I want to see what someone says about a topic that 1)
> > isn't being pointed to by anyone -- perhaps because it is too new,
> > for example, or 2) isn't linked to by an "important" web site. The
> > point here is that those seeking information have a plethora of
> > purposes -- not all information needs can be adequately served by
> > one, rather specific, model.
> 
> Well, the web is full of sites that suggest the best search engines for
> different purposes.  If I was looking for websites that were not linked
> to by 'important' sites, I would go look at, say, Altavista, and maybe
> use a NOT.
> 
> What search engines would other people suggest for such a task?
> 
> Of course, I'm not sure how ANY web search engine would find a site that
> 
> 'isn't being pointed to by anyone'. I guess you would need to find a
> search engine that crawls directory structures instead of links-- are
> there any large search engines out there?
> 
> If you were an information scientist and wanted to see what wasn't
> popular, I would think that you could take a basic list of the most
> popular linking sites on your topic and use a standard retrieval web
> search engine to pull up sites on that topic that aren't linked to by
> those popular sites. Or download a google set and a set from another
> search engine, and eliminate all the sites listed in the google search
> from your other search engine listing.
> 
> If we are really interested in these kinds of questions (that is, how to
> 
> get this information), we need to be discussing alternatives that are
> solutions to those problems. Nobody on this list is unaware that
> different types of rankings and different types of indexing have their
> strengths and weaknesses.
> 
> In other words, instead of wasting all our time ranting about how a
> screwdriver is not a paint can opener, why don't we talk about where to
> get a paint can opener?
> 
> -- Jenne Heise
> 
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-- 
Mary Lou Cumberpatch
Reference Librarian
NOAA Central Library
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910
Mary.Lou.Cumberpatch at noaa.gov
301-713-2600 Ext. 129