Kamikaze Web Searching Tactics
When Yahoo! and MSN first introduced search engines in the mid-nineties, the skill relied in keyword knowledge and manipulation. If you didn’t know how to use commas, apostrophes, truncations, and other notations within keyword searches you could end up with thousands of irrelevant searches. Without the right results, your ability to navigate within the data can end up as a frustrating needle-in-the-haystack game. Since web searchers are less likely to page through and scroll beyond 10 return results, this in turn has created a high demand for stronger, relevant search results.
Google quickly capitalized on this trend in its early years, offering webmasters the opportunity to maintain prominent placement on search engine results by incorporating keywords successfully within their data. Entire sales systems and advertising models are based on this fundamental concept, to provide both advertisers and users with accurate and relevant results; most of the time.
As avid academics, web enthusiasts, and researchers of all levels continue to use the internet as a vital tool for research, some distinct web search options are beginning to proliferate. ‘Kamikaze’ web searching can be best described as your own powerful process of finding relevant, accurate, and sufficient information on any subject or topic. Browse through the following web search options to speed up your web searching capabilities across any subject or field of study:
Ask.com Advanced Search
A powerful search engine powered by Yahoo!’s search engine, Ask.com can help you fine-tune your search right down to the geographic region, location of keywords/phrases, and even the date when the page was modified. Ask.com covers a diverse range of topics and can be a beneficial resource for many researchers.
Hakia
Currently in ‘beta’ status, this powerful search engine is a proud sponsor of this year’s Web 2.0 conference and has developed a ‘tool of the times.’ Fresh on the market, this search engine gives you the option to enter a simple question, sentence, phrase, or keyword to return meaning-based results. The concept has evolved from conventional indexing, to contextual results. According to the Hakia website, the engine uses technology that returns meaning-based searches very similar to human communication. The returned results are highlighted in complete sentences, rather than keywords, and can give more targeted, refined, and relevant information.
Sphere
As blogs are quickly becoming a research powerhouse for time-sensitive topics, search engines that can track and rank relevant blogs on a specific subjects are also on the rise. Sphere.com targets today’s most popular blogs, topics, and media-related news blurbs all on one blog-searching interface. It also sorts out the top hits and most popular subjects each day, giving you a sneak peek at what the world is looking for.
Infomine
This scholarly resource is the internet’s goldmine of scholarly newsletters, journals, and text on in-depth research in business, economics, government, social sciences, humanities, and other extensive subjects. Search options allow you to browse by record, keywords, and offer both free and fee-based data results.
Librarians’ Internet Index
This comprehensive search engine features summaries and lists of websites on thousands of topics that can help any academic endeavor. The advanced search offers ‘fuzzy’ search options for keywords that are similar to the entry, as well as a ‘New this Week’ page that highlights the best of the web.
Making the best of use of your web-search time can be even more rewarding when you have the right tools and resources to perform the search. Today’s search engines are becoming more focused on specific markets; blogs, scholarly journals, user opinions, and discussion forum topics. This helps to create easier and more targeted search results spanning millions of relevant resources.
