Re: Search Engine Seminar, Day 4: Search Query Strategies

At 11:19 PM 2/11/2004, you wrote:

>I am going to kick off Day 4 tonight, because I will unfortunately be in
>(recently-scheduled) depositions for the next two days.
>
>It has been said that Google's uncanny accuracy with search results has made
>us complacent.  We have grown comfortable with simply typing in a few words,
>and having an exact match show up in the first two or three results.  But
>what if it's not in those first few links?  Or the first page -- or the
>first ten pages of results?  What then?
>
>It means we have to reevaluate our search strategy, and try a different type
>of search.  It means we will have to develop a different type of query, one
>that is more than just a string of three or four words.  Where to start?


eegad, people use only three to four words in their query strings? Where have I been? 

I'm kidding, of course. I know a lot of people only use a few query words, but I try to use as
many query words as possible, at least initially. That's Calishain's Principle of Onions -- 
start with the most specific query words possible and then get more and more general 
with successive searches. Like the layers of an onion you'd peel away layers of queries to 
get more and more general.  I've found that this is the best way for me to get a reasonable
number of search results without being overwhelmed. 

Generally there are three ways I do this: 

1) Introduce some technical information or vocabulary that tilts the results a certain way -- 
A medically-related query with overt medical vocabulary will change search results a lot. 
And of course there's a lot of legal terminology which could be similarly used. 

2) Restrict or remove a top-level-domain from the search -- Restricting academically-oriented
searches to site:edu will narrow down results a LOT. 

3) Restrict query words to a limited part of a page -- For example, I might pick the most 
essential word in the query and restrict its search to the title of the page using intitle:. 


Tara







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