REVIEW OF READING from homework:

Chapter 1: Where does the Internet come from? When was it created? What is the difference between the world wide web and the internet? What is hypertext?

How Google Works: Cf. worksheet

SEARCH ENGINES

Class Objectives: Compare different search engines and discover what resources are made available through them. There are many different types or search engine often with different audiences in mind, or different ways of searching. The important thing is to be able to use more than just Google, Voila or Yahoo.

ANSWER THE QUESTIONS BELOW (You do not need to write out the answers to these questions to hand in at the end of class, but you must know the information for the final exam. You need to know how to search for specific information and how to describe general differences in search engines.So, I advise you to take notes and keep them for the end of the semester.)

You all know how to use Google, but do you know what is behind Google? Inside of the following site http://searchenginewatch.com/ there is a lot of useful information to help you find what you need faster.

1. What is a Boolean Command and how does it work?

To find out, choose from the main page of Search Engine Watch => in the left frame -> “Web Searching Tips”->”Search Engine Math” (or go to “Boolean Searching” which is the 8^th item on this list).

2. What is a spider or a web crawler? (this information is also in Chapter 5 of the handout, Browsing the World your reading homework for this week). To find the answer, you can look on the Search Engine Watch site through -> “Web Searching Tips”-> How search engines work.

Or go to www.hyperdictionary.com and type in Spider. Make sure to look for the Computing Dictionary by scrolling down the page.

3. Find some different Search Engines (other than Google or Yahoo). Look in the section “Web Searching Tips” and then click on Search Links: Search Engines Worldwide.

What audiences can be addressed? How can they be specialized? (At home, you can investigate further to get an idea of how they work especially Specialized Lists or Mailing Lists, for a later course).

4. Testing different search engines. Look up the word “plagiarism” on different search engines and meta-search engines (compare results from at least the top three and one meta-search engine). Are the results the same or different? How many HITS have been found for the word in each of these search engines? How can you describe the presentation of the results for each?

http://dmoz.org/
http://www.askjeeves.com
http://www.alltheweb.com/
http://www.gigablast.com/
http://www.google.com
http://www.metacrawler.com/perl/metaspy (meta search engine)

5. Google has an integrated dictionary. In the search bar (the white space) write in define: plagiarism. What does it tell you? How do you translate plagiarism into French?

6. How can AllTheWeb (Cf. question 4) be useful if you are looking for different formats (like audio or video)? What things do you get from Plagiarism when you select other formats?

7. Different Interface or page layout (if you don't know these words, look them up in the American Heritage Dictionary online): Look up these different search engines. How is the front page organized? What does it look like? Are there ads? Colors? Search bar? Options or tools? (answer these questions in a very general way)
http://www.aeiwi.com/
http://www.infogrid.com/
http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm

8. Can you explain the difference between a traditional search engine and a meta-search engine? Here are some examples:

http://www.metacrawler.com/
http://www.dogpile.com/
http://www.mamma.com/

9. Go back to the Home page of Search Engine Watch. In the column on the left (or at the bottom in the Departments section), click on “Web Searching Tips” section. Then go to the “What People Search For” section.

- What are people searching for in Dogpile SearchSpy? (Take a few minutes to see how this works. Even click on some of the items if you want)
- What does the Google Trends site do?

10. Find the article called What's the Big Deal With Social Search? By Chris Sherman, August 15, 2006. Scroll (move the curser) down the page to the second section of the article: “A brief history of Social Search”.

Explain how long social search has existed. How does it work? Who or what does the searching?

11. It is sometimes useful to have a specific search engine to look for specific topics, like media, or international pages. Again in the left menu of the Search Engine Watch home page, look at the Search Engine Listings ==> Specialty Search Engines. What is the 6th category?

12. Find the Ratings and Statistics about search engines. What search engines does the company Nielsen (they have offices across the street from the UCP) identify as the most popular in July 2006?

NB: another helpful search engine index comes from England: http://www.search-engine-index.co.uk/

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HOMEWORK:

Read Chapters 5 “Browsing the World” & 6 “Searching for information”, Ivens, Faster Smarter Internet, Microsoft Publishing, 2003.

Write to Irish: Write two paragraphs, one in French and one in English (100 words Max for each), in which you treat the subject. It is best if you treat the same subject in both French and English. Next week, hand in a paper copy to your teacher and post online in the yahoo group (in the correct file) a copy for your classmates.

A) How are you representative of youth in France. (la culture jeune en France)

OR

B) Why and How YOU use the Internet.