Gone are the days when all research was done in the library and
with encyclopedias. These days, students can almost avoid the
library altogether throughout their education. The Internet is
the main reason for this - online libraries, databases, and the
World Wide Web have made nearly unlimited information available
to its users. Of course, along with any type of good searching
and researching practices, users must be cautious with the
information they obtain.
It's absolutely true that there is a lot of information on the
web, but it's equally true that not all of it is valid, usable,
or based on fact. It is also valuable to switch up your
search/research tactics from time-to-time, to find the strategy
that produces the most desirable results for you.
The so-called "Big Three" search engines are: MSN, Google,
and
Yahoo. These three engines are popular for a reason. Nearly 72%
of searchers use these three sites for results. At this point,
all three of these engines are massive and moneyed.
They are able to employ powerful spider programs that can crawl
the Internet, looking for and returning search results. Their
funding makes them able to afford more computing power, better
spiders, and whatever new technology evolves to comb the Internet
in an automated fashion.
The downside to these popular engines is that results lists are
becoming highly advertising-focused. The big marketing term that
online marketers are consumed with is "search engine
optimization" or SEO. With a focus on SEO, search results can
lead to articles that are heavily laden with "keywords".
These keywords are often specifically implanted to draw better
and higher placement on results pages. That doesn't necessarily
translate into valuable or desired information for you, the
searcher. In addition, the big three search engines incorporate
sponsored-placed results in their lists. If searchers don't
notice the "sponsored" classification, they may believe these
results are part of the desired information, instead of merely
advertisements.
An often-overlooked tool for searching the Internet is a Meta
search engine. These Meta engines don't have the budget of the
big engines, which is one reason they're frequently overlooked
or simply ignored.
Another reason I believe they're overlooked is because they
compile the results of multiple search engines. There's no
benefit, in the eyes of the Big Three, to meta search engines,
because their results are combined with their competitors'.
Unless they can guarantee that their particular search results
would be the highest ranked, they'd rather not deal with meta
engines at all.
Meta search engines dampen the brand power of the bigger search
engine companies. Plus, bigger search engines don't want you to
find out that you prefer a different engine over theirs!
These underused meta search engines offer different perspectives
and results than what you've come to expect from other search
engines. Some of the best meta search engines currently available
are: www.dogpile.com , www.widow.com , www.clusty.com , and www.surfwax.com.
Dogpile.com is perhaps the best-known of the meta engines. It
complies the top 10 results from various sites, including the Big
Three. As a comparison, widow.com uses a different mathematical
equation to compile results, eliminating the sponsored results
found on dogpile.com and minimizing repetition of content.
Clusty.com also compiles results, but separates out the sponsored
results at the top of the page, making it far less confusing for
users, as compared to digging through dogpile's mix of sponsored
and unsponsored results. Finally, surfwax.com lists one-line
results, giving you a large quantity of results at an eye's
glance.
For a searcher who needs to find and sort through a great deal of
information available online, meta search engines are the way to
go. They ultimately save time for the researcher, who doesn't
need to type in the same search terms over and over in each
individual search engine. It also helps to cut down on repeat
results if you use the right meta search engine (widow.com, for
example, does a better job of not having repeats than
dogpile.com, in my experience).
Niche search engines offer different results than the typical
search engines, as well. For many Internet users, these niche
engines are not even known to exist. However, hundreds of niche
search engines do exist, on a wide-ranging set of topics or
niches.
Some popular niche engines you may have heard about (and not
realized were niche engines) include: www.technorati.com , www.healthline.com, and www.blog-search.com. echnorati.com
focuses on the blogosphere of tech topics.
Healthline.com is comprised of all things health and medical
related. Blog-search.com focuses on, well, just what it sounds
like - blogs!
Finally, human search directories offer yet another perspective
for your searches. If you are not familiar with these, you really
should give them a try sometime.
Directories like www.mahalo.com and www.dmoz.com are
two examples of human search directories. In these, actual
human beings research topics, providing pages with the most
relevant results. They can be really interesting and spot-on, but
they can also be highly subjective, according to who is assigned
to a topic. As always, be cautious with the information you
receive, as there is real potential for human error and human
opinion to affect the search results.
Finally, when deciding which search engines to use for your
searches and research, think of quantity versus quality. Some
search engines will give you a high quantity of results, but they
can contain a good portion of sponsored results, and a lowered
portion of content results.
The purpose of researching a topic online is to learn new
information, and if you are relying on the Big Three search
engines, you might just find that there is nothing new to be seen
under the Google, Yahoo or MSN.
A quality search engine should save time for the searcher, so
keep your options open to less traditional search engines to get
a more in-depth understanding of your topic!
