1. UB Utrecht HvA-MIC GO Opleidingen
searching the internet
what patent searchers should know
Eric Sieverts
WON, 11-12-2012

2. agenda
• searching the web
• the volatile google landscape
• smart searching
• dating and back to the past
• reliability
• google options
• beyond google
• beyond general web search
• the social landscape

3. the general
agenda importance
web of specific
?=? material
everything types?
general specific
web material
search search how to …
how to …
when
& why

4. an ever changing google landscape
• unreliable numbers
• irreproducible results
• disappearing functions
• changing interfaces

5. "coping" with numbers of results
in structured databases the effect on the number of results of
how you combine terms, generally meets expectations, but:
• with Google (and other web search) numbers are not
stable, irreproducible, unreliable, with inexplicable effects
– refine with an AND-relation may increase number of results
– expand with an OR-relation may decrease number of results
– numbers are only extrapolations from small part of search index
– depends on distribution of the index over servers
– depends on Google version, browser, whether logged in, history, ...
– not just Google: Bing results also depend on geographic setting
• Danny Sullivan explains why Google can not calculate:
http://searchengineland.com/why-google-cant-count-results-properly-53559
Why Google Can’t Count Results Properly

6. Google as a vanishing machine
some services and options disappear completely
– timeline, wonder wheel, toolbar, ...
– + operator
– real time results, code search
– google buzz, google wave, google directory, ...
others are only hidden
– links for advanced search and for settings hidden under “cog wheel”
(sometimes dependent on browser)
– Scholar, Patents and Groups no longer mentioned in menus
– backlink search no longer in advanced search
– search for "similar" pages & "cache"-link are hidden in "invisible"
pop-up page preview
– …

9. like faceted search in for instance Scopus

10. e
but m eanwhil
dy
this is alrea
nt erface !
an "old" i
refinements and additional functions
like in modern "web scale discovery" systems

11. tools & facets from clear left column
to blurry top menu (for mobile's sake?)
google.nl
[until 2 weeks ago]
google.com

12. all options by material type, in old interface

13. Google tries outsmarting us
Google tries to improve and to broaden your queries
• automatic spelling corrections (veilgheid >> veiligheid)
• search for words with same word stem (singular/plural, verb,
conjugation, inflection, …)
• expands acronyms (jfk >> john f kennedy | wwii >> world war II)
• adds synonyms (vaccination >> immunization)
• transforms separate words to compound term & vice versa
(veiligheid maatregel >> veiligheidsmaatregel | catfood >> cat food)
• may leave out term as optional if not differentiating enough
never often what/when or notEnglish than in Dutch
more sure and elaborate in
• personalises search, based on previous search behaviour
and if you don't like all of this ........ >> "verbatim"

15. option
recently
to
moved
u
top men
new option introduced early 2012
verbatim
on google.nl: "woord voor woord"

18. standard semantic coding
allowed Google to make a
recipe search engine
"embedded metadata"
standardisation of
property descriptions in HTML
of recipe pages, with
"microformats"/"rich snippets markup"

19. Google's "Knowledge Graph"
knows 500 million objects
with 3,5 billion properties
(but only in English)

20. dates
??
no

21. publication dates
• limitation while searching google
– before search: only "past day/week/month/year"
– after search: also limitation on custom range "from .. to .."
search tools:

22. publication dates
• limitation while searching google
– before search: only "past day/week/month/year"
– after search: also limitation on custom range "from .. to .."
• how reliable are google's dates? NOT
• how else to determine date?
– look at page text (especially top and bottom or blogging date)
– look in page source (HTML) for metadata
– try entering javascript in browser URL bar
javascript:alert(document.lastModified)
but does NOT work for CMS generated pages
– look for indexing date in Google cache
– try to find recent time stamped version in Web Archive
(waybackmachine)

26. disappeared / old versions of pages
• recently disappeared: try search engine cache
not just google! :
Bing
Yahoo
Exalead

27. disappeared / old versions of pages
for older versions: try web archive (waybackmachine)
http://archive.org
• links within same site are mostly working
• if particular page has not been crawled, they show which
other pages on that site have been crawled
• some pages/sites have only recently been crawled
• other pages/sites go far back in time
• if domain name has changed, you must use the old name
• some sites don't want to be crawled

31. but sometimes:

32. intermezzo about
trust and integrity

33. reliability & integrity - general
general website assessment criteria
• professional lay-out
• indication of author/organisation (“about us”)
• data about organisation: address, telephone, map/driving directions
• indication of targeted audience
• not too many advertisements and pop-ups (although every site has them)
• clear navigation
• internal search option
• speed of web server
• backlinks from well known organisations **
• up to date-ness (with date given)
• language use
• interpret the URL/domain-name (eg: edu, edu.au, edu.sg, edu.ng, edu.lb, ac.uk,
gov, gov.uk, gov.hk, gov.au, gov.on.ca, gob.es, gob.mx, gob.ve, gob.ec, ...)

34. reliability & integrity - organisation
Information about organisation
• Google pagerank (backlinks)
use for instance: http://www.prchecker.info/
http://www.checkpagerank.net/
• Alexa rank (web traffic)
see for instance: http://www.alexa.com/
http://www.seomastering.com/alexa-rank-checker.php
• domain owner
use for instance: http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx
http://whois.domaintools.com/
• search for "backlinks"

37. reliability & integrity - backlinks
search backlinks to particular web-page/-site
• Google: link:http://www.domain.zz/folder/file.html
very incomplete result
• Yahoo site explorer: died last year
• DuckDuckGo: link:http://www.domain.zz/folder/file.html
often > google; no total numbers given
• OpenSiteExplorer: linking pages + linking domains
very complete; also domain & page authority
paid subscription if more than 3 queries /day
• Exalead: link:http://www.domain.zz/
no backlinks to specific page, but to whole site
• Alexa: 100 most important domains backlinking to site

38. the 35 sites
mentioned under
"reputation"
after
9
no
more
results

41. total
list:
30
results

44. backlinks - variable ratios
reported #
backlinks google DDG OSE
homepage1 17 9 2016
deeppage1 4 0 30
deeppage2 9 30 224

45. some more "how to"
• domain search: site:edu OR site:edu.* [for all edu (sub)domains]
site:shell.com OR site:philips.com
• url search: inurl:novelty
• title search: intitle:catalytic
just
• filetype search: filetype:pdf
filetype:xls OR filetype:xlsx
filetype:doc OR filetype:docx
more than shown in
advanced search
drop-down menu
filetype:rss
• exact search: "greenhouses“ [or VERBATIM for all words]

48. general
search engines besides google
• Bing microsoft, large
• Yahoo! content=Bing, large
• Blekko uses hashtags to search more [domain-] selective
also many predefined hashtags; e.g. /likes for Facebook
• DuckDuckGo assures privacy, no personalisation, no filter-bubble,
rather small, !Bang-function offers many extras
• Gigablast green search engine, rather small, some unique functions
• Exalead french, many advanced functions, primarily demo system
• Millionshort leaves out results from most popular sites → the long tail
• WolframAlpha knowledge engine, facts, calculations
together, these others have 30% market share in US; in NL only 3%
• Yandex in Russia more popular than Google
• Baidu in China more popular than Google
• Naver, Daum in South Korea more popular than Google
• Seznam in Czechia more popular than Google

49. material type specific search
blogs google blogs, icerocket, technorati
[rss] CTRLQ, RSS SearchHub
video google video, youtube, youtube edu channel,
bing video, blinkx, voxalead-news
images google image, yahoo image, bing image, flickr,
tineye (ip-check), panoramio (geo-search)
science google scholar, microsoft academic, scirus,
oaister, scientific commons, science.gov
nieuws google news, yahoo news, bing news, cnn, bbc,
historische kranten KB, historic american newspapers (LOC)
tweets twitter search, topsy, tweetzi, postpost, snapbird
social socialsearcher, socialmention, samepoint, whostalkin, kurrently
forums google groups, omgili, boardtracker

57. tweets & social search
• Twitter in 140 characters
– often with shortened links
– often with photo- or video-link
– often with hashtags (#agreeduponkeyword)
search (often limited to last 1 - 2 weeks,
and .... to those 140 characters)
– twitter-search (also advanced search), tweetzi, …
– topsy (also older messages)
– postpost (your own timeline - i.e. everything you're following)
– snapbird (full tweet history of 1 person – by his/her twittername)
– twicsy (photo's on twitter)
– ...
overview/review of tools: All the easiest ways to search old tweets
57

66. tweets & social search
• “Real time / social search engines”
– socialsearcher, socialmention, samepoint, whostalkin, kurrently, …
(tweets + blogs + facebook + …)
– Google personal results / Google+ ("search plus your world")
– real-time pictures: skylines
• Forum discussions
– omgili, boardtracker, ...
– Google groups (also old newsgroup discussions)
for research methods:
– advice from Henk van Ess (dutch): "de digitale detective" (2012)
– How to: use social media in newsgathering (2012)
– 100+ Social Media Monitoring Tools (2010)
66

69. the end
any questions?