Module 4 - Boolean Searching Task

As Google automatically assumes the Boolean operator AND my initial search results were actually pretty limited so you could say there was some room to wriggle.

To achieve absolute maximum results I used the Boolean operator OR between each keyword "desktop OR meta OR search OR osx" and closed up "os x" to "osx". This resulted in an increase from 206,000 results to a more respectable figure of 7,090,000,000. Heh!

Obviously this is not a manageable search as Google is looking for pages which contain anyone of the keywords. To narrow down my results I began by removing the OR operator and changed my keywords "meta search" to "metasearch"; I now had 111,000 results to go through. The really funny part about doing this; results 3 and 4 are my own blog entry regarding the Search Task! Have a look if you don't believe me.

At this stage I felt that my initial keywords were affecting the quality of my results. To try and improve results I switched keywords and included the operators + and - with various keywords. As a result my search of "metasearch software +mac -windows" now yielded only 13,400 results. Much more manageable and of better quality overall (it didn't include my blog entry).

Now, other than using a specialist search engine, I'm not fully aware of a foolproof way to only get results back from university sites. It was mentioned on WebCT to use "+.edu" to achieve this, personally I found that this did not filter results enough. In the end I added "-.com" to my search string and again changed my keywords including adding another Boolean operator. As such my search string was now "(metasearch AND software) +.edu -.com" which gave me 519 mostly results from government or educational sites.

Of course I could have just used the keywords "metasearch software mac" on Google Scholar to get something similar results wise.

Module 4 - Search Engine Task

For the non-mac users in the unit, OS X's Sherlock has been replaced by the much niftier Spotlight. Unfortunately I have not been able to work out how to make Spotlight search multiple online search engines, nor have I been able to find a desktop metasearch engine tool for a Mac. As such I have used the online metasearch engine Search.com to complete step two of this task. Now on with the show.

Search 1
Site: Google.com
Keywords: desktop meta search os x
Results: 206, 000

Check out the search results from Google

Search 2
Site: Search.com
Keywords: desktop meta search os x
Results: 166, 020

Check out the results from Search.com

Google not only yields more results, but the relevancy of the results is also far better with Google than Search. Google's first result is indeed for a desktop metasearch app (albeit something similar to spotlight rather than for the web) unlike Search.com's self referencing list of web search sites.

I am a big fan of Google. 9 times out of 10 it finds what I am looking for and when it doesn't, I use Google to find me a specialist database or directory to try and find more particular information on what I am searching for. Then I go back to Google and refine my search.