CILIPS organised an advanced search workshop in Edinburgh, which I led. The participants were from a variety of types of organisation including academic, publishers, public sector, health and commercial. At the end of the workshop they compiled a group Top 10 Search Tips. This is their list:

1. Yahoo! Finance - http://finance.yahoo.co.uk/ for the UK version. Yahoo! Finance gives an overview of quoted companies on the major stock exchanges around the world. Information includes current share price information, downloadable historical share price figures, charts, recent news, company profiles and director dealings.
2. Make use of the file format search available in Google, Yahoo, Live and Exalead (but not Ask). Use the advanced search screens, the filetype: command in Google, Exalead and Live, or originurlextension: in Yahoo. For example filetype:ppt . Search for ppt or pdf when looking for presentations; PDF for government, official and industry/market reports; xls for spreadsheets containing statistical data; and rss or xml to locate RSS feeds.
3. Looking for papers by an academic? Find out where they currently work, or have worked in the past, and conduct a site search to see if any of their articles are in an institutional repository.
4. People are an invaluable source of information and help. Join discussion lists to tap into their knowledge, for example JISCmail at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/ has a wide selection of lists covering many different topics.
5. Use the site or domain search to look for difficult to find information on a particular web site, or to limit your search to types of organisation for example gov.uk for UK government or ac.uk for UK academic pages. Use the advanced search screens of the search engines or the site: command for example site:statistics.gov.uk car ownership.
6. Make more use of the advanced search screen options including intitle, inurl and search engine specific features. For example Google’s numeric range search and Exalead’s phonetic and approximate spelling options.
7. Combine commands in the main search box for more complex search strategies, for example: carbon emissions trading ~forecasts site:gov.uk 2012..2015 filetype:xls OR filetype:pdf
8. Use the link commands to find pages that link to a known page or web site. This usually helps you find pages of similar content and type. Live.com’s link commands have been de-activated but Yahoo’s still work. To find pages that link to a specific page on a site use link: followed by the full URL of the page, for example link:http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/stats.htm . To find pages that link to anywhere on a site use linkdomain: followed by the domain, for example linkdomain:rba.co.uk. Live.com’s linkfromdomain command, which is still working, lists all the external links on a site, for examle linkfromdomain:rba.co.uk
9. View the search engines’ cached copies of pages to highlight and locate your search terms in long documents.
10. Try the Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org/ for lost pages, documents or sites.

UKeiG held yet another ‘Google and Beyond’ workshop on November 6th 2007, this time in London. As usual, the participants were asked to come up with a list of their Top Search Tips. Here it is!

1. Graball http://www.graball.com/
   Search two different search engines side by side and compare results.
2. Use ’site search’ to search within a specific, individual site or to a particular type of site e.g. UK government sites. Especially useful for sites that have poor navigation or awful internal search engines. Use the site: command, for example site:gov.uk or use the Advanced Search screens of the search engines.
3. Use file format search to limit your search to one or more file formats, for example PDF, PPT, XLS. A good way of focusing your search: many government and industry/market reports are published as PDFs, statistics in spreadsheet format, and PowerPoints are a good way of tracking down experts on a subject. Use the Advanced Search screens or the filetype: command, for example filetype:ppt
4. Intelways http://www.intelways.com/. Type in your search once and then run it through individual search engines one by one. The search engines are grouped together by type, for example Image, News, Reference. A useful reminder of what else is out there other than Google and that perhaps you should be thinking of searching different types of information.
5. Numeric Range Search. Available only in Google and searches for numbers within a specified range. The syntax is 1st number..2nd number. For example:TV advertising forecasts 2008..2015

   or

   toblerone 1..5 kg

6. Alacrawiki Spotlights http://www.alacrawiki.com/. Extremely useful in providing reviews and commentary on industry specific web sites that have statistics, market research and news. Invaluable if you need to get up to speed on key resources in a sector or industry.
7. Panoramio. http://www.panoramio.com/. Now owned by Google. A geolocation-oriented photo sharing service with uploaded photos presented as a mashup with Google Earth.
8. Wayback Machine - http://www.archive.org/. For tracking down copies of pages or documents that have disappeared from the original web site. Type in the address of the web site or the full URL of the document, if you know it. Note: this is not guaranteed but worth a try for older documents that are unlikely to be in the search engine caches.
9. Google Book Search . Useful for searching within books that Google has been allowed to scan, and in particular older text books.
10. Use anything but Google! For example - in alphabetical order - Ask.com, Exalead.com, Live.com, Yahoo.com. For a day, try out other search tools to see if you can survive without Google. You may go back to Google as your first port of call but at least you will have discovered the strengths and key features of the alternatives.
11. For current news try Google News and its alert service (it’s free!). And don’t forget blogs, for example Google Blogsearch, Ask- Blogs, Blogpulse, Technorati.
12. Blogpulse trends. Click on the graph icon on the results page to see how often your search terms have been mentioned in blog postings over time. Used by many of us who monitor competitor or industry intelligence to see what are hot topics and when. Many of the ‘peaks’ will tie in with press announcements: it is those that don’t that are really interesting. Click on the peaks in the graph to see the postings.

Yes, it’s yet another Top 10 Search Tip - this time from a group of researchers from International organisations based in Switzerland. The event was hosted by CERN in Geneva, well known for its particle accelerator but also the birth place of the World Wide Web. The group came up with the following Top 10.

1. CrossEngine - http://www.crossengine.com/. This is fast becoming the most popular non-Google tool on my Advanced Search workshops. Dozens of different search tools are grouped under tabs by type, for example web, video, audio, images, news, blogs, reference. Type in your search terms just once and then click on each search engine in turn to run the search. It is more up to date than Trovando.it , which is a similar tool, and has a more extensive collection of resources than Turboscout. It has additional features such as file type search options for Google and Yahoo, and you can search social bookmarking and network tools such as Delicious, Furl, Squidoo, Facebook.

2. Vivisimo - http://www.vivisimo.com/. Searches several different search engines at once, presents a de-duplicated list of results, and also organises them into folders based on their content. There is still a web search box in the upper right hand corner of the Vivisimo’s home page but it tries to point you directly at Clusty, which it owns. Interestingly, the results and folders that you see when you run the same search in Vivisimo and Clusty are slightly different.

3. Exalead - http://www.exalead.com/. A search engine developed by a French company. Some of the people working on it are ex-AltaVista, which explains their resurrection of the wild card and NEAR command. Useful for its advanced search features such as approximate and phonetic spelling. Several users have commented on its European bias and web coverage.

4. Google Define. Unsure what a piece of jargon means or what an acronym stands for? Go to google and use the define: command. For example, define:ADSL will bring up a page of definitions from various resources on the Web. You can also search for definitions in languages opther than English (go to the bottom of the results page for the links).

5. Phrase searching. We all know about placing phrases within double quote marks, but someone has spotted that in Google you only need the opening quotes to force a phrase search. As the person who nominated this one for the Top 10 said, it’s pure laziness on our part but it works.

6. Askx - http://www.askx.com/. This new beta version of Ask is proving to be very popular. The home page has a single search box but the results page includes news, images, blog postings and suggestions for alternative strategies alongside the web pages.

7. Creative Commons and public domain images. If you need to quickly identify images that you can re-use and the terms and conditions of that re-use, search by Creative Commons licenses or for public domain images. Try http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ where you can search by type of Creative Commons license, http://commons.wikimedia.org/ for Creative Commons and Public Domain, or Morguefile.com for Public Domain images.

8. Thumbshots Ranking - http://ranking.thumbshots.com/ - for checking the overlap, or lack of it, of the major search engines for a search strategy.

9. A9.com - http://www.a9.com. Enables you to display results from search tools of your choice side by side. Although the interfaces to many of the resources no longer work, it is still a popular tool with many people.

10. Want to see if RSS is for you? Try the web based Google Reader at http://www.google.com/reader. Several people have commented that they have problems updating their feeds in Bloglines through their proxy server. Their experience is that Google’s reader is better and more reliable in this respect.

Last week I was at the University of Aberystwyth running a workshop on advanced Internet search techniques and new technologies. This was a re-run of the session I did at Swansea at the beginning of the month and the Top 10 tips the Swansea participants suggested are in an earlier blog posting. This is the Top 10 from the Aberystwyth gang. There are some similarities between the two, notably serious interest in what Microsoft are doing with Live.com and in particular Academic Live, a rival to Google Scholar. There was no question about the number one in their list - Crossengine. There was unanimous agreement that this is an excellent tool for quickly running a simple search across many different types of search tools.

1. CrossEngine - http://www.crossengine.com/. Dozens of different search tools are grouped under tabs by type, for example web, video, audio, images, news, blogs, reference. Type in your search terms just once and then click on each search engine in turn to run the search. It is similar to Trovando.it but more up to date, has additional features such as file type search options for Google and Yahoo, and search options for social bookmarking and network tools such as Delicious, Furl, Squidoo, Facebook.

2. Link commands - link:, linkdomain:, linkfromdomain:
Use the link: and linkdomain: commands in Live.com to find pages that link to a known page or site. Use them to find pages that are similar to your known page, or to see who is linking to your site.

For example:

link:www.site.co.uk/library/ will only find pages that link to the specified page on a site.

linkdomain:site.co.uk will find pages that link to any page on the site.

Live.com’s linkfromdomain: will list all the external links from a web site. For example linkfromdomain:mysite.co.uk.

Useful if you want a single list of sites on an evaluated portal or directory, or if you are spring-cleaning your web site and want to see what you have linked to.

3. Allwhois - http://allwhois.com/. Use this to find out who owns the domain name of a web site - an essential part of assessing the quality of information.

4. Wean yourself off Google. Look at alternative search tools and identify their strengths.

5. Live.com and Academic LIve
Live.com - http://www.live.com/. Formerly MSN search and totally revamped by Microsoft and a serious alternative to Google.
Academic Live - http://academic.live.com/. Different coverage to Google Scholar, has a source list (Google Scholar does not) and format options for bibliographic management packages such as RefWorks and EndNote. No author search though.

6. The Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) http://www.archive.org
The Wayback machine periodical takes a snapshot of the web enabling you to see how a site has evolved over the years. Invaluable for tracking down “lost” pages, documents and even web sites.

7. Google results number heads the fiction best seller list!
The number of ‘hits’ that appears at the top of your Google results rarely reflects the real number of documents it has found. It tells you it has found 6,542 but only displays 103. Ignore it.

8. Use the domain or site search for sites that have appalling navigation or dreadful site search engines, for example the European Parliament web site. One participant tried the technique on Hansard and said she had better and quicker results than using Hansard’s own search. The site: command can also be used to limit your search to a type of site, for example site:gov.uk for just UK government web sites.

9. Exalead.com http://www.exalead.com/ for its phonetic search, approximate spelling search and wild cards. Especially useful when searching on medical terminology that has alternative spellings or may have been mistyped.

10. Change the order of your terms in your strategy.

For example:

chocolate production UK Switzerland Belgium

production UK Belgium chocolate Switzerland

give different results. The search engines rank those pages that contain your terms close to one another in the order specified near the top of the list. Change the order and you often see a significant difference in the pages at the top.

This week I ran a workshop in Swansea on Internet search and new technologies. The first half of the day was taken up with new and recent developments and participants had the rest of the day to try out search techniques, tools, RSS, blogs and wikis for themselves. The group was made up of HE and health-care information professionals and they were all experienced, advanced searchers. It was hard work keeping up with them! At the end of the workshop they came up their own list of Top 10 Tips on Searching:

1. Live.com - http://www.live.com/. Formerly MSN search and totally revamped by Microsoft, this proved to be very popular and will probably be the main alternative to Google for the workshop participants. They particularly liked the scrolling image results page and Academic Live, which is given a separate mention later. There were some negative comments about Maps, but that area is still under development and worth revisiting now and again to see how it is progressing.

2. Graball - http://www.graball.com/. A tool for comparing the results of two search engines side by side.

3. Allwhois - http://allwhois.com/. Use this to find out who owns the domain name of a web site - an essential part of assessing the quality of information.

4. What does the plus (+) sign before a term do? The major search engines automatically search for all of your terms but they ignore common ’stop’ words such as the, of, and. For example, if you are researching a quotation that contains stop words put it all inside double quote marks and precede each of the stop words with a plus sign. They will then be included in the search. In Google, use the plus sign before a word to stop Google stemming it and looking for variations.

5. Google’s numeric range search for anything involving a range of numbers - weights, distances, temperatures, prices. Separate the numbers at the start and end of the range with two full stops (no spaces), and include a unit of measurement (optional).

For example:

toblerone 1..5 kg

will look for sites selling massive Toberlone bars. (We assumed that one carves up the 4.5 kg bar with a chain saw!)

6. The link: and linkdomain: commands in Live.com to find pages that link to a known page or site. Use them to find pages that are similar to your known page, or to see who is linking to your site.

For example:

link:www.site.co.uk/library/ will only find pages that link to the specified page on a site.

linkdomain:site.co.uk will find pages that link to any page on the site

7. Remember to use filetype: and/or site: commands to focus your search. Filetype can be be used to limit your search to PDFs, PPT, Excel, Word documents etc. Statistics, for example, are often left in Excel spreadsheets. The site: command can be used to limit your search to a type of site, for example site:gov.uk for just UK government web sites, or to search just one site, for example site:statistics.gov.uk. Perfect for large sites that have poor navigation or useless internal search engines.

8. Alacra Industry Spotlights - http://www.alacrawiki.com/ and click on the Alacra Spotlights link. A collection of overviews on different industries highlighting key publications and resources for each sector. Ideal if you are new to a sector. Although this is a wiki, the Spotlights area is locked so that only Alacra can edit the pages.

9. Academic Live - http://academic.live.com/. “More reliable and trustworthy than Google”, and format options for bibliographic management packages such as RefWorks and EndNote. This event was held at Swansea University and there were links in each record in the results list that helped the searcher track down the full paper in the University’s own collection.

10. CrossEngine - http://www.crossengine.com/. Dozens of different search tools are grouped under tabs by type, for example web, video, audio, images, news, blogs, reference. Type in your search terms just once and then click on each search engine in turn to run the search. Similar to Trovando.it but more up to date and it has additional features such a file type search options for Google and Yahoo. Great for reminding you of alternative tools and different types of resources that you should be including in your strategy.

Another advanced search strategies course successfully completed at Manchester Business School with the usual eclectic mix of participants, and a new top 10 tips and tricks at the end of the day. It is interesting that RSS feeds get a mention this time around, and it does seem that more people are starting to use them for news and alerts.

1. Trovando - http://www.trovando.it/. Enables you to type in your search strategy just once and run it across dozens of search tools one by one. Tools are grouped by type, for example web, blogs, audio/video.
2. Remember that each search engine is different. Each has unique search features, has different coverage and sorts yoru results in a different way.
3. Seek out evaluated subject listings and specialist tools for subjects or industries that are new to you. For example Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk/), TechXtra (http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/), Alacrawiki (http://www.alacrawiki.com/).
4. AlltheWeb Livesearch - http://livesearch.alltheweb.com/. Starts displaying results as you type in your search so that you can quickly see when you start to go wrong. It also displays related and alternative search strategies that can help you if you are new to the subject area.
5. Wayback Machine - http://www.archive.org/. For tracking down copies of pages or documents that have disappeared from the original web site. Type in the address of the web site or the full URL of the document, if you know it. (Note: this is not guaranteed but worth a try for older documents that are unlikely to be in the search engine caches.
6. RSS feeds. More efficient than email for monitoring topics and managing search alerts. IE 7 and Outlook 2007 can both read RSS. If you would prefer to try a web based reader try Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/), Newsgator (http://www.newsgator.com/) or Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader)
7. Keep up to date with who is best at which type of search. For example image search, blogs and feeds. Obviously, this can quickly change so use RSS feeds to monitor announcements and blogs that assess and evaluate what the search engines are doing.
8. Make the most of the Advanced Search options to narrow down your search, for example filetype or format, site search (can be used to search individual sites or types of site such as academic or government sites).
9. Search Engine Showdown - http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/. Excellent site from Greg Notess with summaries of the major search engines, unique features and news on what they are up to.
10. You are not going mad! Pages do disappear without trace and Google does do strange things. Try another search engine or a totally different approach. Above all, trust in your abilities.

Delegates on the recent Advanced Internet Search Strategies workshop held at Manchester Business School came from the commercial sector, charities and the NHS. It was a lively day and the group came up with a very interesting list of Top 10 Tips:

1. It isn’t you!
You run your search a second time in Google and you get a completely different set of results despite having run the same search a mere 20 minutes before. Or you run a site search in Google but the results come from here, there and everywhere. Or your results bear no resemblance whatsoever to your search strategy. Don’t worry - it isn’t you. Google does play up at times and results are rarely consistent or reproducible from one moment to the next. If you are having serious difficulties getting any sense out of Google, don’t struggle. Try another search engine (Yahoo, AlltheWeb Livesearch, Ask, Exalead, Windows Live).

2. Google.
OK - we slagged off Google in Tip 1 but it can still deliver the goods a lot of the time and is the first port of call for most of us. Make sure, though, that you are using the advanced search features to the full and that you are using the right part of Google for example News for current headlines, Images, Blogsearch etc.

3. AlltheWeb Livesearch - http://livesearch.alltheweb.com/
Start typing in your search and AlltheWeb Livesearch immediately displays results and alternative search strategies that change as you type. The changing results help you spot when you are starting to go wrong with your search and the suggested alternative searches can be useful if you are unsure of how to tackle a subject.

4. Google Maps/Local - http://maps.google.co.uk/.
Great maps combining ordinary street maps with satellite images. (The business search option is not always reliable, though, and Google does not seem to want to tell you where railway stations are).

5. Use the Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org/) to see what was being said on a web site in the past or to track down “lost” documents and pages.

6. Remember that you are searching an out of date index of the web when you are using Google et al. Google is the least up to date: Yahoo and MSN/Windows Live seem to be the most frequently updated.

7. Explore Blogs as potential sources of information opinions on industry events, products etc and RSS feeds as a means of delivering search alerts and current news headlines. You will need a feed reader for RSS feeds: try Newsgator.com (web based reader) or Omea (http://www.jetbrains.com/omea/reader/) if you are looking for a PC based reader.

8. Trovando - http://www.trovando.it/
Enables you enter your search strategy once and run it in different types of search tools one by one for example web, images, news, blogs, audio, video.

9. Repeat the most important terms or terms in your search one or more times. This will often change the order in which your results are sorted and give you different results.

10. If your search involves numbers, distances, weights, prices or measurements of any sort use the numeric range search in Google. For example:

toblerone 1..5 kg

to find online shops selling large(!) bars of toblerone

or

TV advertising spend forecasts 2005..2012

to look for forecasts mentioning years from 2005 to 2012.

I ran another Advanced Search Strategies workshop on April 26th. This time it was organised and hosted by Manchester Business School. As usual the participants were asked at the end of the day to come up with their own list of top tips and tools. There were no real surprises in the list, although two RSS/Blog tools were mentioned this time around highlighting the increased interest in these technologies. Wikipedia was popular despite some of the bad press it has been receiving, and the new Accoona News SuperTarget makes its first appearance in the list.

1. There are other search tools. Alternative search engines to Google such as Yahoo, Ask, and Exalead sort your results in different ways and have unique search features. Try evaluated subject listings such as BUBL, EEVL, Alacrawiki for quality information and overviews on industries and subjects.

2. Use the domain/site search options to search for types of sites or to search just one site. For example .gov.au for Australian government sites, .edu for US academic pages, statistics.gov.uk for UK official statistics. Ideal for those massive sites that have dire navigation menus and in-site search, or for tracking down lost documents within a site. Available in Google, Yahoo, Exalead and Ask.

3. Repeat the most important term or terms several times in your search strategy to change the order in which documents are ranked. For example ‘beer market share belgium czech’ and ‘beer market share belgium czech czech czech’ give different results. Works in Google, Yahoo and Exalead

4. Use synonyms in your search. Use the OR command to search for your own alternative terms, the ~ before a term in Google to use Google’s synonym search, or see what terms and strategies search engines such as Exalead and Ask suggest.

5. Ask or answer your question in your search strategy. For example “How fast can a hippopotamus run” or “A hippopotamus can run at”

6. If you are new to RSS, try Bloglines.com for monitoring RSS feeds for current awareness and alerts.

7. Try Blogpulse.com for searching blogs, especially the Trend Search. The free web version allows you to monitor and compare graphically the frequency of up to three search terms or phrases over a period of up to 6 months.

8. BBC news for current and archived news

9. Wikipedia for a general overview of a topic.

10. Accoona.com SuperTarget News enables you to further refine your search by date, publisher, relevant company, person, country and state. It will also search free sources of news that provide archives older than 30 days.

11. Use meta search tools to search quickly across several different tools at once:

Trovando.it - to run your search across dozens of tools one by one, and by type of information for example blogs, images, audio/video

Killerinfo.com - generates a single deduplicated list and organises similar results into folders or topics

Dogpile.com - searches Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. You can view a single deduplicated list or view two or more of the results lists side by side with the unique results in each highlighted.

Jux2.com - generates a single list of results but also gives you the option to display what Google missed, what was unique to Google etc.

If you failed to get a place on the course this time around, the workshop is being re-run at Manchester Business School on September 14th, 2006. Further details are on the Manchester Business School web site at http://www.mbs.ac.uk/programmes/courses-seminars/management-research.htm

I am currently in Derbyshire giving a course on Searching Beyond Google. As usual, the group is asked to come up with a list of Top Tips & Sites. This is it!

1. BUBL http://bubl.ac.uk/ A good starting point for evaluated sites and portals covering a wide range of subjects and industry sectors.

2. FITA http://www.fita.org/. Links to sources of information on trade, export/import, business and companies worldwide.

3. Trovando http://www.trovando.it/. Enables you enter your search strategy once and run it in different types of search tools one by one for example web, images, news, blogs, audio, video.

4. Narrow down your search by limiting by filetype for example xls for tables of statistics in spreadsheet format, ppt for presentations on a subject, PDF for official reports or long documents. Available in most of the major search tools.

5. Use http://ranking.thumbshots.com/ to compare the overlap - or lack of it - in the first 100 results from pairs of search engines.

6. Blogs and blogging are worth exploring both as sources of information and as a means of disseminating information and current awareness.

7. BvD free directory http://www.bvdep.com/ for a list of companies by sector and/or country or for tracking down the location of a company and its subsidiaries.

8. Make use of the lesser known features of Google: Synonym search, define:, numeric range search

9. RSS feeds - a technology to be investigated as a means of keeping up to date with events and for SDI (Selective Dissemination of Information).

10. Official Company Registers for information on SMEs (Small & Medium-sized Enterprises).

Three lists for locating registers on the web:

Company registration around the world http://www.hrasg.ch/eng/welt-e.htm
World-wide Registries http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/links/introduction.shtml#reg
Official Company Registers http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm

We have been running our Advanced Search Strategies workshop again, this time in Sheffield. As usual, we asked the participants at the end of the day to come up with their top tips and sites. This is the list.

1. Use evaluated subject listings to filter out the rubbish, for example OMNI (http://www.omni.ac.uk/) in the health and medical area. Use Pinakes (http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html) or RDN (http://www.rdn.ac.uk/) to help identify them.

2. Ranking.thumbshots.com to demonstrate the overlap - or lack of it - between search engines, and to convince colleagues and users that Google is not always the best or only tools for an enquiry.

3. Use the filetype format available on all the main search engines’ advanced search screens to narrow down your search. For example spreadsheets for statistics, Powerpoint to find information on or from experts on a subject, PDF and Word files for “meaty” market and industry reports, or government reports.

4. Try Kartoo (http://www.kartoo.com/ for a different approach to presenting results and for suggestions on additional or alternative search terms.

5. Trovando.it to run your search quickly in several different search tools, and as a reminder of the different resource types and tools that are available, for example reference.

6. RDN Virtual Training Suite (http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/) to bring you up to speed on key, reputable resources in an unfamiliar subject or industry sector.

7. Google numeric range search to look for anything involving a range of numbers. For example, “top” banks may be top 10, 15, 20, 100 (top 10..100 banks), or for identifying forecasts (TV advertising spend forecasts 2005..2012).

8. Pattern search in Exalead (http://www.exalead.com/). For example /psych.*ist/ finds pages containing psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst etc.

9. Image specific search tools are often better than the image options of the general search engines. For example Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/), Morguefile (http://www.morguefile.com/), Picsearch (http://www.picsearch.com/).

10. Visit Google Labs (http://labs.google.com/) to keep up to date with what is new and experimental at Google, for example Google Suggests, Google Sets, Personalized Home Page, Search History.

11. Use the Google synonym search to include synonyms in your strategy. Precede your term with a tilde (~), for example ~bank will also find banks bankers, banking, financial, commerce.

12. Use the site search option on the advanced search screens of the main search engines to limit by type of organisation, for example government or academic, or to search a specific site. Particularly useful for searching massive sites whose navigation and internal search engine are dire.