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Finding Information on the Web Made Easy
Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services, March 1998 |
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Business Information Home Page Search this site:Search the web:
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(A version of this article appeared in the magazine Home Run, March 1998, Vol 6 number 54, pp 20-22) Two years ago, you would have to have been hard put to use the Internet for serious business research. Not only was there very little in the way of reliable information, but you had to be a real techie to find it. Today, the web is the place to find data. Newspapers, Acts of Parliament, share prices, the Budget, coping with self assessment, BBC transcripts, product sourcing, arcane hobbies - almost anything is out there and a lot of it is free. But if you don’t know the web address of the page (known as the URL), how do you find it? Let’s be honest about this. On a good day, throwing a few words into a search tool such as AltaVista might work. For most of us, though, our initial forays into the esoteric world of "search engines" culminate in pages of meaningless drivel. You are researching companies in the paint industry and what do you get? "Hi! My name’s George. Welcome to my home page. This is me painting our bedroom last weekend…. These are the paint colours we used…. This is my pet gerbil - he got covered in paint…." And so on. The good news is that you can get decent results with very little extra effort. The bad news is that there is no "best" search tool, but there are several that are worth putting in your Top Ten Web Sites. What are Internet search tools?These are facilities at web sites on the Internet that enable you to search the content of over 100 million web pages. All you need is your Internet connection and a web browser (Netscape or Internet Explorer). You connect to the search tool by typing in the web address in the "location" or "Go to" box in your browser. So for Yahoo, one of the most popular starting points, you type in www.yahoo.co.uk and press Enter. Search tools fall into two categories: directories e.g.Yahoo and form based search engines e.g.AltaVista.
DirectoriesDirectories have a series of headings or classifications that you follow to reach a selected list of Web sites. For example, within Yahoo you could follow links to Business & Economy and then Small Business Information. Most directories also have a search box that you can use to type in search terms if you cannot work out which headings to follow. Directories are limited in their coverage because they rely on web page owners submitting details of their site to the directory. The directory editors then visit the site, confirm its existence and decide whether or not it is worthy of inclusion. It can take months to add a site. The benefit is that directories tend to be more focused than the mega search engines like AltaVista. Yahoo is the major International directory but there are "regional" Yahoos, such as UK and Ireland on www.yahoo.co.uk, that list local sites more prominently. If you want to concentrate solely on the UK try: UK Yellow Pages - www.yell.co.uk UK Index - www.ukindex.co.uk UK Directory - www.ukdirectory.co.uk
Search EnginesSearch engines work by keeping an index of words from web pages. They send out programs (spiders or bots) onto the Internet looking for new and updated web pages, bring these back "home" and add them to the database. The whole process is automatic so there is no sensible human to throw out any garbage. To find the information you want, type in your request in a search box and perhaps click on a few extra options such as geographical location or language. The search engine then goes through its database and presents you with a list of web sites that it thinks are relevant. This relevance ranking is based on how many of your words are on the page, the frequency with which they appear, and where they appear. Pages in which your search terms are in the first paragraph are assumed to be more relevant than those with the terms in the third or fourth paragraph. To go to any of the pages in the results list, just click on the hypertext-linked entry. Some of the more popular search engines are: Hotbot - www.hotbot.com For UK or European information, head straight for Euroseek (www.euroseek.com), Euroferret (www.euroferret.com) or UK Search (www.uksearch.com).
LimitationsSearch engines cannot index password protected sites. If you are looking for stories on Humphrey the Downing Street cat, a search engine will find the Cabinet Office press release but not the articles in the Electronic Telegraph. Neither do they index subscription services such Mintel or Dun & Bradstreet. You may sometimes find that you get completely different search results when you re-run a search strategy within, say, five or ten minutes. AltaVista is particularly prone to this behaviour. This happens because the service sets a time limit on a search; if it is very busy, it won’t have time to look through the whole of its database and will present you with what it has found within the allotted time.
Searching for a company web pageStart with Yahoo and simply type in the company name in the search box. If that doesn’t work , try one of the search engines or a service such as Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com), which carries out your search in several engines at once. Use the company name and one or two keywords to describe its activity, for example Thorntons chocolate.
Subject gateways (umbrella sites)These are web pages where an individual or organisation has evaluated key sources on a subject and provided links to them. For business information try the DTI’s Enterprise Zone (www.enterprisezone.org.uk) or my own company’s collection on www.rba.co.uk/sources/. Many trade and research associations, for example the Leatherhead Food Research Association (www.lfra.co.uk), maintain subject gateways.
Tips for better searchingKeep your searches simple. Throw in the main terms and concepts that describe what you want. Despite what many of the Help files say, don’t go overboard and think of every possible synonym. That just gives the search engine more scope for getting it wrong. For example, to find articles on Bill Gates’ encounter with the Flemish flan flinger type in Bill Gates custard pie cream cake. To reduce the amount of dross, use the advanced options: 1) Enclose phrases or peoples names in quotation marks e.g. "Bill
Gates" The order in which you type your words sometimes matters, so put your most important concepts first. If you have no joy with the first search tool in your list, don’t spend hours working at it. Move on to the next one. If you get to the last in your list and still have no joy, review your whole approach or consider - horror of horrors! - that the information is not freely accessible through the Net.
Using more than one search engine at onceIf you don’t fancy ploughing through search tools individually, try Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com) or Inference Find (www.inference.com). You type in your search once and it is processed simultaneously in half a dozen or so search engines, duplicates removed and a single list of results is presented to you. The disadvantage is that you cannot easily fine tune your search. There are also software packages that you can load onto your PC to do the same thing, for example Web Seeker, Web Compass or Web Ferret (my current favourite and available free from www.ferretsoft.com).
Assessing qualityOnce you have your list of web sites, you then have to look at the quality. Many Internet Service Providers give their subscribers free web space, so anyone with an Internet account can set themselves up as an "expert" in anything. You must ask yourself: who is providing the information? Are they a well known company or specialist? Can you verify their credentials? If it is a well known publication, and the information is free are they providing access to everything or just sample data? How often is the information updated? What is the copyright situation and are there restrictions on your use of the information? This last point is especially important if you plan to sell on the information or incorporate it into your own publications.
And finally.....The Internet is constantly changing as are the search tools so it is important to keep up to date. An excellent source of information on this subject is Search Engine Watch. This provides a monthly newsletter which can be sent automatically to you by e-mail. Details are on the web site at www.searchenginewatch.com. Or, for a fortnightly review of search tips and useful web sites, place your order for FreePint at www.freepint.co.uk |
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| This page was last updated on 9 November, 2008 | Copyright
© 1998 Karen Blakeman. All rights reserved |