This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3'0 License

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The Continually Expanding Internet how to find
Quality Information NOLUG Presentation 27th
February 2009 Presented by Karen
Blakeman http//www.rba.co.uk/nolug/
Photo Oslo University College http//www.flickr.c
om/photos/damiel/1534329928/
This presentation is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 License
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Karen Blakeman RBA Information Services Tel 44
118 947 2256 karen.blakeman_at_rba.co.uk
http//www.rba.co.uk/ blog http//www.rba.co.uk/
wordpress/ Facebook Karen Blakeman Twitter
karenblakeman
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What Google's homepage may look like in
2084www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/10/10/opinion
/1010opart.html
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Two points to remember..

• Google et al do not exist to help you find
  information
• Search engines, and in particular Google, are
  temperamental beasts
• Do not attempt to apply logic to the way
  they work therein lies the path to madness

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Types of search tools

• Humans
• is colleague or a friend already working or has
  worked in the subject area?
• who have you met at meetings, conferences?
• discussion lists, trade/professional
  associations, bloggers, LinkedIn, Facebook etc.
• Search engines
• different options for different types of
  information e.g. news, images
• Evaluated listings, subject listings, types of
  information
• Databases and peer reviewed sources
• multi search engine tools
• search many search tools at once
• or type in your search once and click on each
  search tool in turn

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How up to date are search engines?

• Not very
• You are searching an out of date index of the web
  and not the live web itself
• May takes days to months for a site to be added
  to the index
• Hierarchy of sites for updating
• Some tools keep links to dead pages for a long
  time
• Least up to date
• Google
• Most up to date
• Live Search, Yahoo

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A search engines results may vary

• In content and presentation
• from one minute to the next
• different server being used
• testing out different search and ranking
  algorithms
• Country versions
• different emphasis
• local content
• different interface
• different search features

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General search techniques

• By default, the major search tools look for all
  of your terms in a page
• Use double quote marks around phrases
• e.g. climate change
• To exclude pages containing a term, precede the
  term with a minus sign (-) use with care
• Boolean search
• OR, AND, NOT
• must use capital letters for the operators
• only OR works in Google and even that does not
  work well but worth trying more complex searches
• Live.com, MSE360 and Exalead are best (Yahoo has
  withdrawn NOT and nested searches no longer work
  correctly
• for example (directory OR directories OR
  database) AND (oil OR petroleum) AND Norway

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General search techniques (2)

• Focus your search on areas of the document
• inurl for example inurlclimate change
• looks for your terms in the URL
• intitle for example intitleclimate change
• looks for your term in the title of the page
• Search sites or domains using the site command
• chocolate labelling regulations siteeuropa.eu
• Imagine what you would like to appear in your
  ideal document and include those terms in your
  strategy
• Partially answer your question in your strategy
• A hippopotamus can run at
• Use the file formats and domain search to refine
  your search

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File format search

• Use advanced search options to limit your search
  to file types or format
• pdf or doc for government or industry/market
  reports
• xls for data and statistics
• ppt or pdf for presentations
• Search in at least Google and Yahoo, also
  consider Live.com
• Looking for experts on a topic, presentations, a
  how to guide, general background on a subject,
  information on an organisation
• advanced search ppt or pdf format
• Slideshare http//www.slideshare.net/
• authorSTREAM http//www.authorstream.com/
• YouTube http//www.youtube.com/

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Advanced Search options can vary depending on the
country version of Google
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General search techniques (3)

• Repeat your key search terms in your strategy
• chocolate production france belgium austria
• chocolate production austria france belgium
  belgium belgium
• give different results
• In Google can enter up to 32 terms, Yahoo 250
  characters
• Change the order of your terms
• chocolate production france belgium austria
• production france belgium austria chocolate
• different results
• See the summary and comparison chart for the
  major search engines at http//www.rba.co.uk/searc
  h/compare.pdf and http//www.rba.co.uk/search/comp
  are.shtml

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Unique Google search features

• Automatically looks for variations on your terms
• to force and exact match precede your terms with
  plus signs e.g. air pollution
• Synonym search
• precede your search terms with a tilde () e.g.
  banking
• only works on English terms
• Numeric range search
• can be weights, distances, years, prices
• use Advanced Search screen
• or the search box on the Google home page
• search term(s) first value..second value unit of
  measurement
• toblerone 1..5 kg
• TV advertising spend forecasts 2009..2015

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Unique Google search features (2)

• Proximity
• use the asterisk () to stand in for one or more
  terms
• macular degeneration picks up
• macular retinal degeneration
• macula disciform degeneration
• macular choroidal degeneration
• macular vitelliform degeneration
• macular pigmentary degeneration
• separates the terms by one or more words
• no information on maximum number of terms of
  separation

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Google oddity

• Why does
• sitewww.nhsdirect.nhs.uk macular degeneration
• give 37 results
• but
• Sitewww.nhsdirect.nhs.uk macular degeneration
• give

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Google oddity

• When the results are displayed click on Advanced
  Search

Google sees the capital S in the Site
command and decides that the site search is a
phrase search!
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Google - Whats New

• Knol A unit of knowledge
• competing with Wikipedia
• http//knol.google.com/
• Google results may now include images, books,
  news, site summaries and links
• varies depending on country version of Google
• Much improved Google Finance, worthy competitor
  to Yahoo Finance
• http//www.google.com/finance
• BUT country coverage of share prices not as good
  as Yahoo e.g. for Norway

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Google Finance
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Yahoo Finance
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Google SearchWiki

• Enables you to customise your results
• move pages up or down the ranking, delete pages
  from your list
• add comments to a page
• Must be signed in with a Google account
• Can interfere with Firefox add ons such as
  Customise Google
• Not available in all country versions

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Google plug-ins and add ons

• Google Toolbar for both Firefox and IE
• search from your browser
• direct search for highlighted terms
• fully customisable
• Firefox Add-on
• Customize Google
• http//www.customizegoogle.com/
• Add numbers to results
• Can stream , keep scroll down the page to see
  more results instead of clicking on the next page
• Links to other search engines at the top of the
  results list, engines vary depending on search
  type e.g. web, new, images

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Design your own search engine

• For
• regularly searched sites
• selected sites on a topic
• searching sites on a reading list
• Rollyo
• http//www.rollyo.com/
• max 25 sites
• Google Custom Search Engines
• http//www.google.com/coop/cse
• at least hundreds of sites, maybe thousands!
• can import lists of sites
• Cannot search password protected sources or sites
  where you have to fill in a form to access the
  information

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Google CSE

• Examples
• Netting the Evidence
• http//www.google.com/coop/cse?cx0043268979584776
  069503Adjcbsrxkatm
• AlacraSearch
• http//www.alacra.com/alacrasearch
• pipl
• http//www.pipl.com/
• Chipwrapper
• http//www.chipwrapper.co.uk/
• can be hosted on your own site or on Google
• http//www.rba.co.uk/sources/energy.shtml
• http//www.google.com/coop/cse?cx0143042123649627
  40038tui4ebh5r_a

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Create your own Google CSE on Google
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..or host it on your own web site or blog
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Other search engines...

• Different coverage
• Level of indexing on web sites
• Sites included in the index
• Update frequency
• Amount of a page that is indexed
• Different search features
• Different algorithms for sorting results
• Compare search engines
• http//ranking.thumbshots.com/

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http//ranking.thumbshots.com/
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Ask

• http//www.ask.com/, http//www.ask.co.uk/
• Recent changes resulted in loss of features
• Suggests related topics
• Particularly good for searching blogs (but need
  to do a web search first to see the More option)
• new QA tab/more answers

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Exalead

• http//www.exalead.com/search/
• Supports wild cards
• asterisk () at the end of a word
• pollut finds pollute, pollutant, polluting etc.
• NEAR - finds words within 16 terms of one another
• NEAR/n finds words within n number of terms one
  another
• climate NEAR/3 change
• Approximate spelling, phonetic search (?)
• Regular expression (internal masking of letters)
• Feedback from users is that there is more
  European content that seems to be given priority

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http//www.exalead.com/
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iSEEK

• http//www.iseek.com/
• Clusters results into topics, people, places,
  organisations, date time
• Search on a person gives priority to social media
  profiles
• Education option more research oriented pages

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Live Search

• http//www.live.com/
• Results tend to be more consumer oriented
• Has the most up to date database
• Possibly has the most extensive database of web
  pages
• Good image search option
• Blogs RSS search http//search.live.com/feeds/
• Revamped interface but no improvement in advanced
  search screen best results by using commands
  e.g. filetype and Boolean search
• Link commands, Books and Academic Live all gone

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MSE360.com

• http//www.mse360.com/
• See reviews at
• http//www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2008/10/05/mse36
  0-search/
• http//www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2008/10/06/update-o
  n-mse360/
• Full Boolean nested search options
• Advanced search screen offers country, phrase,
  excluding terms, domain/site search
• Can use commands e.g. filetype , site
• Results show web, video, images, Wikipedia and
  blogs
• Quick to respond to bug reports and fix problems

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Yahoo!

• http//search.yahoo.no/ http//search.yahoo.com/
  
• Results are ranked in a different order to Google
• Boolean AND, OR
• NOT no longer available use the minus sign.
• parentheses no longer work
• Indexes first 500 K of a document (Google 101 K)
• Region command (inherited from Inktomi)
• region
• e.g. regioneurope, regionmediterranean
• others are africa, asia, centralamerica,
  northamerica, southamerica, mideast,
  southeastasia, downunder

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Yahoo!
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Compare search engines

• Graball.com
• http//www.graball.com/
• compares two search engines of your choice side
  by side
• TripleMe
• http//www.tripleme.com/
• compares Google, Yahoo and Live side by side
• FuzzFind
• http//www.fuzzfind.com/
• searches Google, Yahoo, Live, Del.icio.us
• Zuula
• http//www.zuula.com
• runs your search through a range of search tools
  one by one order can be customised
• Browsys Powersearch (was Intelways/Crossengine)
• http//www.browsys.com/powersearch/
• runs your search through a plethora of search
  tools one by one

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FuzzFind
http//www.fuzzfind.com/
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Zuula

• http//www.zuula.com/

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http//www.browsys.com/powersearch/
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Evaluated listings and customised search

• Evaluated subject listings
• Some examples
• Alacrawiki Industry Spotlights
  http//www.alacrawiki.com/
• Intute http//www.intute.ac.uk/
• Pinakes http//www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/p
  inakes.html
• Heavy human involvement
• evaluation and assessment of content
• only the home page or relevant section of a site
  is listed
• Customised search engines
• AlacraSearch - http//www.alacra.com/alacrasearch/
  
• Chipwrapper http//www.chipwrapper.co.uk/
• Pipl - http//www.pipl.com/

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http//www.alacrawiki.com/ - spotlights
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http//www.alacra.com/alacrasearch/
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http//www.alacra.com/alacrasearch/
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Specialist search tools

• Think type of information
• news, official company information, statistics,
  scientific, biomedical?
• Reference sources and peer reviewed, for example
  
• Wikipedia .org (yes, I know there can be quality
  issues!)
• Scirus.com
• TechXtra.ac.uk
• Google Scholar (possible quality issues)
• Google Books especially for older material
• Structured databases e.g. Web of Science, Scopus,
  STN, Factiva, LexisNexis often priced

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Scientific/Technical Peer Reviewed Resources

• RefSeek http//www.refseek.com/
• Ten Science Search Engines - http//hwlibrary.word
  press.com/2008/09/22/science-search-engines/
• Scirus http//www.scirus.com/
• Scitopia.org http//www.scitopia.org/
• Science.gov http//www.science.gov/
• ScienceResearch.com - http//www.scienceresearch.
  com/
• Scitation - http//scitation.aip.org/
• WorldWideScience.org - http//worldwidescience.org
  /
• Science Accelerator - http//www.scienceaccelerato
  r.gov/
• TechXtra http//www.techxtra.ac.uk
• search.optics.org - http//search.optics.org/

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Scientific/Technical Peer Reviewed Resources

• Highwire Press http//highwire.stanford.edu/
• PubMed Central Homepage http//www.pubmedcentral.n
  ih.gov/
• UK PubMed Central http//ukpmc.ac.uk/
• DeepDyve http//mysearch.deepdyve.com/start.php
• Google Scholar http//scholar.google.com/
• use with caution

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Google Scholar

• http//scholar.google.com/
• No source list
• Both peer-reviewed and un-reviewed articles,
  pre-prints, institutional repositories,
  references to books, citations
• Excludes Reed Elsevier
• Author search unreliable, search on year of
  publication unreliable
• But
• And the winner is Google Scholar!
  http//74120.weblog.leidenuniv.nl/2009/02/24/and-t
  he-winner-is-google-scholar
• Google Scholar Search Performance Comparative
  Recall and Precision
• http//tinyurl.com/c7ta6s

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Google Scholar

• Google Scholar is brain damagedPeter Jasco,
  Trends in Professional and Academic Online
  Information Services, presented at Inforum , 22nd
  May 2007, Prague
• Does not use publishers meta data
• Cannot differentiate between author, affiliation,
  geographic location, titles and headings
• authorbagsvaerd 115
• authoracknowledgements 158
• authorglossary 471
• Cannot differentiate between publication year and
  page numbers

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Google Scholar
2540 documents published in 2011 or 2012!
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Scirus

• http//www.scirus.com/
• Scientific, scholarly, technical and medical
  information
• Reed Elsevier journals
• Also web sites, patents and pre-prints
• Good advanced search features
• date searching, author searching etc.

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Scirus
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TechXtra

• http//www.techxtra.ac.uk
• ICBL and the Library at Heriot-Watt University,
  Edinburgh
• Articles, key web sites, theses and
  dissertations, books, industry news, new job
  announcements, technical reports, eprints
• Engineering, mathematics and computing
• Free information and pay per view

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Books

• Amazon
• Google Books http//books.google.com/
• can sometimes search inside the book and looks at
  individual pages
• useful for older texts and suppliers of the book
• Advanced search - search by year, author, title,
  ISBN
• Open Library http//openlibrary.org/
• 23,044,231 books, 1,064,822 with full-text
• Project Gutenburg http//www.gutenberg.org/
• different editions may be available e.g. Darwins
  Origin of Species
• viaLibri http//www.vialibri.net/ Rare books from
  over 20,000 booksellers
• Book swap schemes
• Turning over an old leaf
• http//www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/01/
  ethicalliving.recycling
• e.g. http//www.bookmooch.com/

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Open Access Journals

• Directory of open access journals
  http//www.doaj.org/
• free, full text, quality controlled scientific
  and scholarly journals
• 3871 journals in the directory. 1376 journals are
  searchable at article level. Total of 258955
  articles.
• OpenJ-Gate http//openjgate.org/Search/QuickSearch
  .aspx
• 4785 Open Access Journals (2604 Peer-Reviewed)
• Open Access Central http//www.openaccesscentral.c
  om/
• BioMed Central, Chemistry Central, PhysMath
  Central
• ABC Chemistry Free Full-Text Journals in
  Chemistry A http//www.abc.chemistry.bsu.by/curre
  nt/fulltext.htm
• OA Journals - Library Services - University of
  Birmingham http//www.library.bham.ac.uk/support/o
  penaccess/OAJournals.shtml

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News

• BBC http//news.bbc.co.uk/
• Search engine news options e.g. Google
• last 30 days of free news
• no source list, key industry publications may not
  be included
• use country versions for prioritised local
  content
• Google News Archive http//www.google.com/archive
  search
• some sources going back 200 years
• many articles are priced (before you buy check
  other sources)
• Silobreaker - http//www.silobreaker.com/
• Individual newspaper sites
• http//www.abyznewslinks.com/

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Silobreaker http//www.silobreaker.com

• covers free resources
• news, blogs, video, images
• market trends
• geographical location of stories
• people
• networks

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Images

• TASI
• http//www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/using/finding.html
• images.google.com
• search.yahoo.com images tab
• Ask images tab
• Live.com - images
• Flickr.com
• check the license
• http//www.flickr.com/creativecommons

• Morguefile
• http//www.morguefile.com
• Wikimedia Commons
• http//commons.wikimedia.org/
• Freefoto
• http//www.freefoto.com/
• US government web sites
• NASA
• http//www.nasa.gov/

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Audio Video

• Google Video
• YouTube
• Yahoo
• Exalead
• Live.com
• Blinkx for news
• http//www.blinkx.com/
• Browsys Powersearch (formerly Intelways/Crossengin
  e)
• http//www.browsys.com/powersearch/
• Click on the video tab

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Audio Video
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Blogs as sources of information

• Blogs by industry gurus and experts are a good
  way of keeping up to date with what is happening
  in a sector
• Look for the Blogroll of List of Links on a
  relevant blog
• Google Blogsearch http//www.google.com/blogsearch
  
• use advanced search to search within an
  individual blog
• Ask http//www.ask.com/ Blogs and feeds
• Blog search engines and directories
• http//www.technorati.com/
• http//www.blogpulse.com/

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Blogpulse search and trends
Click on the graph to see trends
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Blogpulse Trends
Shows how often your search terms occur in
postings can compare up to three searches
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Twitter

• http//www.twitter.com/
• Microblogging postings are called tweets and
  140 characters long
• See who is following whom
• Monitor conferences, what people are saying about
  companies, products, services
• http//search.twitter.com/

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Twitter

• Reputation management
• What are people saying about you?
• Oh dear!

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pipl

• http//www.pipl.com/
• Review at http//www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2007/05/0
  5/pipl-people-search-beta/
• Searches hidden web Google search
• blog search, Google Groups, LinkedIn, Flickr,
  Google Scholar, Electoral Roll, Directories,
  Amazon, Hoovers, Zoominfo etc.
• Google web search results not the same as an
  ordinary Google search they incorporate terms
  such as resume, CV

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LinkedIn
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Facebook
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123People

• http//www.123people.com/
• Searches
• image sections of major search engines
• Flickr
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Blogs
• Web
• Videos
• Email addresses

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Search visualisation tools

• Different ways of visualising results
• Show links between documents, search terms,
  people, organisations
• Can help identify alternative search terms,
  search topics

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kartoo.com
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Cluuz

• http//www.cluuz.com/
• Cluuz core technology understands the
  relationship between the entities, terms, or
  persons searched leading to more relevant, easy
  to understand search results
• Not totally intuitive but the network
  visualisation is cool
• The links in the network visualisation do not
  always relate to the same person or organisation
  but they are usually working in a similar field
  or subject area
• Results change from one day to the next, one hour
  to the next, but still worth a look

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Cluuz
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Quintura.com
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AllPlus.com
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Disappearing pages

• Search engine cache copies
• Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask, Exalead
• Firefox users
• install the Resurrect Pages add-on
• Wayback machine
• http//www.archive.org/
• from 1996 to about 6 months ago
• navigate the archived site or type in the full
  URL of the document if known

27 November 2006
Karen Blakeman www.rba.co.uk
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Wayback Machine
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Karen Blakeman RBA Information Services Tel 44
118 947 2256 karen.blakeman_at_rba.co.uk
http//www.rba.co.uk/ blog http//www.rba.co.uk/
wordpress/ Facebook Karen Blakeman Twitter
karenblakeman