Comments for Karen Blakeman's Blog

Comment on And the next Google killer is….Google! by Mike

Mike — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 02:28:54 +0000

I noticed that Google has become useless if you are searching about an app that has two words joined together, e.g. an app called GoodSpeech returns results on how to give a “good speech”. Similarly, I looked up a techie jargon thing, “AL Mac”, and got returns for a zillion sites about an “Almac” company. I’m not familiar with other search engines… yet.

Comment on DuckDuckGo – silly name but a neat little search tool by Karen Blakeman

Karen Blakeman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:11:05 +0000

Thanks for the feedback, James. A lot of people are seriously starting to look at Google alternatives and DDG seems to be one of the favourites.

Comment on And the next Google killer is….Google! by Karen Blakeman

Karen Blakeman — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:09:16 +0000

Many thanks for those kind words, Geoff.

Have you spotted any signs of Search+ in non-Google.com versions of Google? It still hasn’t made its way over to Google.co.uk yet.

Comment on DuckDuckGo – silly name but a neat little search tool by James

James — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:57:24 +0000

With all the recent problems and drama, I switched off google a couple weeks ago. Some people suggested I try DDG and so far I love it. Honestly it reminds me of what google ‘used’ to be when they were good.

I’ll still use google occasionally as it’s more a ‘breaking the habit’ thing for me, but I don’t mind these occasional uses now that I’ve blocked all of their spyware, tracking and ad domains.

DDG is already my default homepage and I think after a couple more weeks of weaning myself onto it, that it will be my new home for here on. The only thing I hope to see in the future are their own video and image searches. I’ve been recommending them to everyone I know.

Comment on And the next Google killer is….Google! by Geoff McDowell

Geoff McDowell — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:28:26 +0000

Karen, yet again you manage to elegantly dissect an issue, provide an intelligent discourse, and demonstrate how we can move on. Thank you.

Comment on Dear Google, stop messing with my search by Wilf Staton

Wilf Staton — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 01:01:59 +0000

Yes I am also getting very frustrated with google ignoring what I want. It didn’t realize but it also appears to be ignoring [exact match] now. When I do one it returns the same result as a broad match.

What really sickens me is that Google espouses all about “relevancy” when talking about peoples websites and content but completely ignores the relevancy of peoples search terms.

Comment on Yahoo Site Explorer closes – try Blekko instead by Karen Blakeman

Karen Blakeman — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:10:00 +0000

Many thanks for the feedback and the info on other site explorer tools.

Comment on Yahoo Site Explorer closes – try Blekko instead by George - Site Explorer

George - Site Explorer — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:41:49 +0000

Hey Karen,

I really like Blekko and hope that they are somehow able to catch up to the likes of Y! and G some day… I really love their open model, although it seems like a lot of times people start out this way but the bigger they get, the more they close up their offerings. We see that with G nowadays where they are offering less and less KW data in analytics, no longer showing a lot of detail for link: based queries, etc.

We put together a list of other alternatives that people might be interested in trying here, with at least 5-6 more to come.

http://siteexplorer.co/top-10-.....ernatives/

Blekko is unique in that it is the only pure search engine in the bunch.

Comment on Dear Google, stop messing with my search by Karen Blakeman

Karen Blakeman — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:47:13 +0000

Hi Andrea,

The reason why the number of your results increases when you add terms or exclude them is because Google has two indexes – a primary and secondary index. For simple straightforward searches Google uses its primary index, which contains higher “quality” documents (and, no, I’m afraid I’ve not been able to find out what quality means other than Google’s page rank). If you then add more terms or exclude some by using the minus terms Google then adds in results from its secondary index. At least, that is how I understand it works. If I am wrong in any of this, hopefully someone will be along soon to correct me. I *think* that the way to partly get around this is to use the Verbatim option in the menu on the left hand side of your results page. But the figures don’t really add up.

For example:

cats mating behaviour gives 449,000 results
cats mating behaviour -lions gives 4,370,000 results
cats mating behaviour followed by Verbatim gives 5,880,000
cats mating behaviour -lions followed by Verbatim gives 2,050,000

and then to confuse you even more:

“cats” “mating” “behaviour” -lions gives 199,000
“cats” “mating” “behaviour” -lions followed by Verbatim gives 2,050,000

Completely bonkers!

Comment on Dear Google, stop messing with my search by Andrea Ellis

Andrea Ellis — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:50:24 +0000

Karen, an interseting read. I use Google for ‘serious research’ including using – (minus) terms to exclude certain terms which are unrelated to what I am looking for. Sometimes I have 2,000 results for a certain subject but when I enter an exclusion term the results leaps up to say 5,000. All very frustrating. Do you know why Google does this or how I can get round this?

Comment on Online Information pre-conference workshop: Searching without Google by „Searching Without Google“ « Kadie's Liblog

„Searching Without Google“ « Kadie's Liblog — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:46:22 +0000

[...] Information 2011“ einen Vortrag / Workshop zum Thema Suchmaschinen gehalten: „Searching Without Google„. Den Folien nach zu urteilen, war das Ganze wirklich [...]

Comment on Online Information pre-conference workshop: Searching without Google by Bibliotheken en het Digitale Leven in December 2011 | Dee'tjes

Bibliotheken en het Digitale Leven in December 2011 | Dee'tjes — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:18:40 +0000

[...] Searching without Google The slides van de workshop “Searching without Google”, 28th November 2011, van Karen Blakeman [...]

Comment on Free UK company information: Company Director Check by Karen Blakeman

Karen Blakeman — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:09:58 +0000

Company Director Check uses Companies House data which has always has been publicly available, although to see some of it on the Companies House website you have to pay a small fee. All Company Director Check does is repackage the information and offer some of it free of charge. They have removed the day from the date of birth now so that only the month and year is displayed but the full date of birth can easily be obtained from Companies House. With respect to addresses, the changes to the Companies Act now allow all directors to use a service address for the public record instead of their home address. It will be interesting to see how many decide to make use of that option.

Comment on Yahoo Site Explorer closes – try Blekko instead by Karen Blakeman

Karen Blakeman — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 07:57:49 +0000

SEOMoz looks excellent from the SEO point of view but for those of us who occasionally use link information as a part of general web research it seems like overkill. I think it depends on how often one uses link commands as to whether or not it is worth investigating further as a research tool. I’ve had a look at Lipperhey and I may be missing something but the data it provides for my test searches is worse than Google’s link command.

Comment on Google: Verbatim for exact match search by Karen Blakeman

Karen Blakeman — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 07:42:52 +0000

Typical! Just when I thought we’d cracked it.

Bing has started doing a Google and changes your search terms whenever it sees fit but it does still have the + sign that you can use to prefix terms and force an exact match. well, it works here but as with Google what works here might not work on your system. There’s DuckDuckGo and Blekko but I’m not sure how large their web database is. It’s all rather depressing