Speak your mind…opinions welcome, wanted, and appreciated

SuDocQueen@evpl — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:11:00 GMT

Hello out there to everyone in EVPL blogland,

I have a dilemma that I could use your help with. Every year I sit down to plan a workshop on useful government documents and websites (more websites than actual documents now-a-days) and every year I get overwhelmed with the glut of information I could offer… Do I focus on how to find useful health and nutrition information? Or on how to find those interesting statistics you always hear quoted from the Census and Labor Departments? Or what about consumer safety information? Or how to navigate Social Security’s website? Or how about following legislation? The list can go on and on. So, I’m opening the floor to all of you, the people that the government is trying to reach with all of this information. What do you most want to know about? What do you need help discovering? Let me know how best to help you.

Meta-search engines

googler@evpl — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:06:00 GMT

A meta-search engine is a web searcher that sends your inquiry to Google and to other search engines, rather than searching its own database. This review at a "search engine optimization" site (which basically means they're more concerned with results placement than doing effective research, but still they know their search engines) takes the view that meta-search engines aren't really all that much better than Google. I generally use them only when I have a very specific inquiry with a lot of search terms. (For some reason this review don't consider AllPlus, although it may not be any better.)

The review did tell me something I didn't know before, though -- there's a meta-search engine, FuzzFind, that includes Delicious in its search. Delicious is a social bookmarking site. Social bookmarking means that instead of (or in addition to) website bookmarks that are stored on one's own PC, people can store them online, in a central location. This creates a sort of recommendation system -- if more people have bookmarked site A than site B, you might want to look at site A first. It's a basically another way to get some kind of indication of quality in a results search, so it's great to see that included in a meta-search engine.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Research Blog : internet, search engines

Speak your mind…opinions welcome, wanted, and appreciated

Meta-search engines