super searcher strategies - wordpress.com · reluctant-entrepreneur.com impact on search pros...

Super SearcherStrategies

Mary Ellen Bates March 28, 2017Reluctant—Entrepreneur.com

search tips & tricks

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Reluctant-Entrepreneur.com

Google’s RankBrain kicks in

Machine learningBoolean isn’t Boolean any more“We think you really meant this…”Less emphasis on text-search featuresMore emphasis on your search history

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Impact on search pros

“Everything you know is wrong”

Forget finality, certainty, repeatability

Creativity counts

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Don’t be too clever

Too many terms = lower resultsDon’t use long OR statementsUse Google’s auto-synonymingGraze, don’t just dig deep

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Try multiple approaches

For terms you want closely related,try all these:word1 word2word1–word2“word1 word2”

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Inexact “exact” searching

VerbatimSearch tools -> All Results -> Verbatim

Intext:To avoid hits from anchor text links

“word”

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Use * strategically

* replaces any term in URL

For innovation initiatives at NASA:site:*.nasa.* inurl:innovation

For finding email addresses withmiddle initials“mary.*[email protected]”

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Google Web ≠ Google Scholar

Search both Web and Scholar to catchtrends, experts

Use Scholar’s Advanced Search feature

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Custom Search Engine

Google still does custom search!Favor/require/suppress specific URLsAppend search termsHelp your clients search better!Fight fake information!

cse.google.com

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Google’s “My Activity”

myactivity.google.com

Creepy or useful?

ONLY visible to you

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OTHER search engines

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Bing

Always my second choice

Different index, different ranking

linkfromdomain:See pages linked from a URLlinkfromdomain:lifehacker.com todo

finds good “to-list” tools

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Bing

Find pages that link to a file typewith contains:contains:mp3contains:xlscontains:pdf

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Peekier.com

Anonymous search engineMostly Bing, and its own crawl

Preview images of the results

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Millionshort.com

‘What haven’t you found?’ tm

Filter by site popularityEliminate ‘click-bait’

Essential for people-searching, otherlong-tail niche searches

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Search the web, save the planet

Ecosia.orgPlants trees in Africa with its ad revenue(6.5 million so far!)Powered by Bing

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Other search tricks

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A case for case studies

Need examples of who’s doingsomething well?

Look for CASE STUDIES on the topicSee Marydee Ojala’s Dollar Signcolumn in Jul/Aug 2016 OnlineSearcher

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EVERY CRS report!

everycrsreport.com

Nonpartisan perspective

Full-text searchable

8,000 reports and counting

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Clients don’t know what toask for

What other data sets would behelpful?

What is your client not asking youfor?

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Knowing when 0 means 0

WHY did you get no results?Typos, transposed lettersWrong logic or syntaxNot using common nomenclatureUnquestioned assumptionsWrong database/file/index

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Knowing when 0 means 0

Tell a storyDo the gaps correlate to an event?What related info did you find?What do you recommend next?

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Use link searches for insight

Unfamiliar site?Validate by seeing who links to itDo linking sites show a bias or PoV?Review outgoing links; where to?

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Link searching

Gigablast syntax is link:the.url

Or try openlinkprofiler.org

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Remember the deep web

Use search engines for leads:Keywords (database OR dataset ORarchive)Keywords (portal OR resources OR“online tool”)

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Finding deep web content

Start with one known sourceAssociation, NGO, non-profit, library ormuseum, etc.

Look for govt portalsdata.gov, usa.gov/statistics, etc.

Then use Bing’s linkfromdomain:

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Reverse image search

Is anyone using our photos?

ID useful chart, personThen look for other copies of thatimage

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Reverse image search

Search by image URL or drag/dropan imageGoogle Image Search, click theTineye.com

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More image searching

Use image search to find reports!Example:search Google Images for “dog food”“market share”Skim/mouse-over results

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Searching with images

Notice that petfoodindustry.com isgood source

Then search the web for

“market share” 2016..2018site:petfoodindustry.com

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Get leads for experts

site:twitter.com/*/lists inurl:librarians

Gets Twitter lists about librarians

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ID similar orgs in LinkedIn

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Curate open access resources

Open-access journals: doaj.org

Open-access books: doabooks.org

Open-access repositories:opendoar.org

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Curate open access resources

Public Library of Science: plos.org

OpenGrey (Grey Lit in Europe)opengrey.eu

BASE – Bielefeld Academic SearchEnginebase-search.net

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Can’t ID a phone number?

Look it up in Facebook!

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Preview shortened URLs

checkshorturl.comType in short URLSee the expanded version, screenshot, description

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PrintFriendly.com

Creates a printer-friendly version ofa web page

Edit out images, extraneous matter,change font size

Browser plug-in, too

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Find Mary Ellen Bates at:

[email protected]: @mebsLinkedIn: maryellenbatesFacebook: maryellenbatesReluctant–entrepreneur.com

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