FIT
100
Assignment 1:
Searching the Web
(or, Finding
what you want, and no more!)
Autumn
2001
Link
to and read the sections on Search Engine Math and Boolean Searching
at the Search Engine Watch website.
Review the Search Engine Features page to help in your search:
Search
Engine Math
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/facts/math.html
Boolean
Searching:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/facts/boolean.html
Search
Engine Features for Searchers:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/facts/ataglance.html
Many of you have done a fair
amount of browsing and searching on the Internet. But have you ever thought about how and where
to search in such a way that you get only those sites you want and no
more? Constructing a
search that does exactly that is very difficult, if not impossible. However, you can learn to search the Web in a
way that brings back a smaller set of “hits” (web pages that match your
search), and improve the chances that these hits are more relevant than
not.
So, what exactly IS a Search
Engine? And why do I care?
A search engine is really
just a program, or series of programs, that is designed to try and help users
find useful information on the Web. A
search engine consists of several pieces (these will be covered in lecture). The basic idea is that a search engine takes
terms that you enter give to it and tries to match those terms with documents
out on the Web that are most relevant.
Seems simple, doesn’t
it? Yes, it seems simple… but
relevance is hard for a program to determine when it doesn’t “know” the person
doing the search. This is an exercise
for you to see both the ease and difficulty of searching for information on the
web.
·
To use basic search strategies in a search engine
and bring back sites with information on a topic.
·
Learn to find the best search method for a
particular search engine.
·
To develop systematic and precise search skills.
Some available search
engines (but not the only ones!!!!):
Google: http://www.google.com/
Uses link popularity as a
way to rank a web site. If 50 different
sites link to one other site, this is a good indicator that it is a relevant
page for the topic it covers.
AltaVista: http://av.com/
One of the largest search
engines around. Allows searches just on
images and other formats. Also has a
translate feature.
DogPile: http://www.dogpile.com/
DogPile is a metasearch
engine. It runs a search across other
search engines to get results. It allows
you to specify a search for images or audio files, etc.
Ask
Jeeves: http://www.askjeeves.com/
Directs a user to relevant
sites by having them ask and answer questions.
Pulls links from a database of sites that answer pre-created questions.
Some search engines use a
directory structure to organize web sites by subject:
Yahoo!: http://www.yahoo.com/
Directory setup. Provides email, news, etc.
List of Search Engines by
function:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/links/
A
useful page to go to lists of search engines.
1. Go to
Yahoo.com and use the categories to find the
After you have found the UW
site, then go back to the start page at Yahoo and try to search for the same
thing using the search box at the top of the page. How did you search? Did the UW site come up in the first page of
results?
2. Search for
information about the riots that broke out in
How did you construct your search?
Compare several search strategies. Which
one appears to be more effective? (look at your top 10
results)
Can you figure out what is happening as the results are returned? Are pages being brought back because they
have all of the terms? Or because they have just some of the
terms?
3. Using the list
of search engines by function at:
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/links/
What would be a good engine
to use if you were looking for national news?
How
about if you are searching for medical information?
Images and other files and
content on the Internet are protected in the same way as print materials and
photographs. Use of digital images for
purposes of alteration and display on the Internet has limited coverage under
the conditions of fair use. [http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html] and [http://www.copyrightwebsite.com/info/fairUse/fairUse.asp].
Public Domain [http://www.copyrightwebsite.com/info/publicDomain/publicDomain.asp] items are those in which
the copyright has been lost, has expired, or the author of the work makes no
copyright claims to reproductions or enhancements of the work.
http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm
If you use an image of a
person for reasons of making a profit, you are responsible for obtaining
permission from the person or their heirs.
If you use a trademark image, you must also get permission.
Copyright in websites: [http://www.copyrightwebsite.com/digital/webIssues/webIssues.asp]
4. Using the
Search Engine Math you read about, construct a search to find sites that
contain images in the public domain. Use Google for
this first search.
5. Do that same
search across in AltaVista and Dogpile as well. Compare your top 10 hits. Do you get the same results?
·
How are they similar?
·
How are they different?
6. Try changing
the search and see if you get different results. For example, if you did your first search as +public
+domain +images, try a search with the phrase “public domain images”
instead.
Do your results change?
7. Do a search
for images related to
8. Find an image
of the
9. Now look for images
you would like to use in a website of misinformation (Project 1) and save them
for manipulation in Adobe Photoshop later on.
Remember to FTP all images to your Dante account so you’ll have them for
use later.
NOTE: Make sure that any image
you select is in the Public Domain OR the copyright policy on the site where
you find it states that you are allowed to use it for non-commercial
purposes!!!!!