Tagging the Web

TVC Alert reported on an interesting thought about further indexing the web. TVC Alert writes "Can Tagging Improve Free Web Search? (31 Mar) Citing a conference paper on the topic, Phil Bradley asserts that social tagging could go a long way toward improving traditional Web search. I think it's a potential worth exploring. I've been impressed with the use of tags in search results in smaller experiments such as LibraryThing.
Phil also shares a tip for finding tagged information at del.icio.us. I'd like to add that the following format automatically generates an RSS feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/[insert your tag here]."

Yahoo tried to do something like this in the early days with their human indexers. Their idea was good and their implementation was great, because they considered consistency to be important. So, I don't think the reemergence of this idea is crazy at all, but I worry about the taxonomy piece. What about the variations in terms e.g."social networking sites" vs. "SNS"? Is anyone going to link them? If they aren't linked, you will have to do additional searches in order to be convinced that you have done your search work thoroughly. I think the message is to tag pages if you have the opportunity and we'll have to see how the search piece shakes out.

ResearchBuzz Writes: New Options for Advanced Google News Search

Tara over at ResearchBuzz had an interesting column at the beginning of the year. She writes: Google has announced a couple new options for advanced searching of the Google News service. First there's the fact that advanced searching and operator searches work for all versions of Google News now -- great for folks using the non-US versions.

Second is that suggested sources has been implemented for the advanced search page. If you start typing the name of a source in the source search box, Google will give you suggestions. So if you type Houston, for example, you'll get a variety of suggested sources including Houston African-American News, Houston Business Journal, Houston Chronicle, and so on. (I guess this would also be a quick way to see if your media source is even listed in Google News.)

Third is that source search is not limited to the exact name of the source. Before if you used the source: syntax, you had to be exact or pretty close with the source name for Google News to find results. This was annoying. Now you can use the syntax with an incomplete name and you'll get results from all sources with your keyword in the name. This could be useful for topical searching -- try doing a query with source:business or source:agriculture or source:retail.

Here's another fun one -- do a general source search combined with the location syntax. I think I want an RSS feed of television station stories in Texas. source:tv location:tx would do the trick.

Google is at it Again

If you have your own blog, you have probably seen the little ad after you have published a post suggesting that you try out Google docs and spreadsheets. Google has now introduced presentation software, an alternative to Powerpoint. Jill Hurst-Wahl mentioned it in the article we posted yesterday and Tara Calishan, from ResearchBuzz also talks about it in her post from September 18.

One of the good things that both have mentioned is that you don't have to e-mail a doc back and forth when you are collaborating. You will also not need to be on the correct computer (laptop vs. desktop) or have it available to you on your flash drive.

Remember, as with most Google offerings, you have to have Google account. Your content may end up searchable, so don't put any sensitive or trouble causing docs up there and password protect all of your docs.

Blog Searching Tips

Tara Calishan of ResearchBuzz recently spoke at Web Search University about blog searching. After her presentation, she gained a tip from the folks at Google about using Google blog search. Her conversation with one Google engineer went like this:


"So why didn't you mention Google Blog search?" he asked.

"Because it's got so much spam in it," I answered, ever the diplomat.

He asked me how I was sorting the results, and I said by date. Because if you're information trapping you want the most recent stuff, not necessarily the most relevant stuff. And since the only options were most recent or most relevant, what could you do?

Aha, said Jeremy. How about using the links on the left? On the left of a Google Blog Search result page, there are several links to narrow results to a specified time frame -- last hour, 12 hours, whatever.

But isn't that like a date search? I asked.

In fact, it isn't. Jeremy explained that when you narrow your search by time using the links on the left, the results from that time span are sorted by relevance. In other words, you'll still get results by relevance, but only for the time span you specified.

I had no idea I could use the left nav that way. That might be a great way to dodge spam on Google Blog Search, especially when you're testing queries for information trapping. The only downside is that this particular sorting option isn't available on Zuula.

Interesting! Read the entire article here.