Ramon’s Weblog

This is a great topic to get into, because I have trouble finding what I am looking for online all the time. The problem is there is so much information online, and the search engines are built in a way that forces you to come up with different keyword lists to try to get what you want. I read this interesting interview with a researcher named Ramesh Jain. It was recorded in 2004, but I thought he made some valid points that still hold true. He talks about the search engine algorithms only working in well defined cases, such as finding a restaurant in Atlanta with a certain kind of food. In cases such as trying to find a so-called “lifestyle” restaurant, the results wouldn’t be that great. We’re bound by keywords, and until developers devise a new way of searching through data, we are going to have to work with what we have.

I was looking for a Website that listed cycling groups and their routes, and never quite found exactly what I was looking for. The most irritating thing is I know there is something out there that fits, but not putting together the right keywords makes it near impossible. On many of my searches, in general, I find the amount of time I have dictates what I choose in the search engine. I don’t have time to sift through 108 pages of results.

Since keywords are the primarily vehicle we use to get our search results, I have been educating myself recently on putting queries together to get better results. I’ve been using an older search engine query cheat sheet and this week I found this updated one. I have to admit I haven’t used all of these search terms, but one that I find really effective is the “site:” term. A couple of weeks ago I was looking for that kid in the orange shirt doing all those crazy break-dancing moves on YouTube, and I already had Google up in a browser. I basically typed “break dancing site:youtube.com” in the Google search field. The video I was looking for was like 5 down from the top. The “site:” term searches the website you put afterwards. Now that’s pretty cool!

Additional Links:
Web Research Guide