| The Other Search Engine With Two Ohs In Its Name |
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That’s right, Yahoo. They continue to innovate, but they get almost no news coverage compared with the Big G. Today they launched Yahoo Site Explorer, which lets you enter a URL and get back a list of pages from that site that Yahoo has indexed, as well as a list of other Web sites that link to the URL. Here’s an example for — Ahem — The World’s Greatest Web Site. What’s the big deal – you can do a link search in Google, right? Yes you can. But Google doesn’t show all the backlinks for the URL you enter. They show the most popular ones. Yahoo Site Explorer allows you to get a more complete list. I have two beefs with Yahoo Site Explorer — one minor and one major. Minor: Navigation can get confusing when you click on the “Explore URL” link for a specific page because the “Pages” and “Inlinks” counts change. (I don’t think it could be made any simpler, though.) Major: You cannot eliminate self-cites. If you absolutely have to do that, you be better off going to Good Old Yahoo Search and using the link and site commands. Here’s an example for – Ow, stop twisting my arm! — The World’s Greatest Web Site again. (Note that you have to include the “http://” with the link command but not with the site command.) |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (0)September 29, 2005
| Welcome to the 20th Century |
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Last month I finally broke down and got DSL. At $14.95 a month, it was cheaper than my dial-up. And I’ve got company — broadband access in the U.S. has jumped 16% this year. It’s about time they started making broadband affordable. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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September 28, 2005
| Adding RSS Feeds to Google & Yahoo |
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Do you have your homepage set to My Yahoo or Google Portal? Do you wish you could read all of your favorite news/blogs from your homepage? Well you can! Adding Jenkins Blog to your Google Portal homepage:
Adding Jenkins Blog to your My Yahoo homepage:
These tips will work with any RSS feed, just get the feed URL by visiting the site or using an RSS Search Tool and paste that into the appropriate box. |
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Submitted by: Nicole Engard, Former Web Manager
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| Book Review: The Search |
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Just finished reading The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle. This is a must-read for anybody trying to make sense of where Web search fits into our profession. By “profession”, I’m thinking primarily — but not exclusively — of law librarianship. Battelle is not a law librarian or a professional searcher, by the way. It’s not a how-to search book like you’d get from O’Reilly or Information Today. It’s not a guide for using Google AdWords to grow your business. It not a history of the Internet. (There are way too many of them already.) And it’s not a Wow-The-Future-Will-Be-Soooo-Cool book, either. (Although there is a touch of that in a couple of the chapters.) The main thread of the book is this. Before Google, search was moribund. Google saved search. For Google to survive short-term, they had to generate cash. AdWords did that for them. (And changed the advertising industry as well.) For long-term survival, they had to do their famous IPO. So far, none of this really interests me professionally. But the next step in the story does — competition. Google v. Yahoo v. MSN v. Amazon v. eBay. That’s what’s driving innovation: desktop search, local search, multimedia search, and more. We as searchers are the beneficiaries of this battle for supremecy among the Big 5. Get the book. The perspective on your profession is worth the 26 bucks. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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September 27, 2005
| Remind Me Again Why I Went on Vacation? |
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I am digging out after a week off. Here’s a quick recap of interesting Web stuff (in no real order) that hit on or around my vacation last week: 1. The Free Library of Philadelphia’s Web site has been redesigned. Why am I blogging about this here? In my classes, I always mention the specialized databases available for free from libraries, whether it be the FLP or Jenkins. Unfortunately the FLP has buried the links to their electronic databases. They’re trying to make them available via a federated search — it’s a little clumsy, but for most patrons I guess it will work OK. But I’d rather use the database vendor’s search interface directly. Previously I could click on the Electronic Resources link and select the database I wanted. Now, I have to click on the Advanced Search link, then find and click on the link to the database. 2. Ask Jeeves will soon rebrand itself as simply Ask.com. IAC/InterActiveCorp seems to feel that No more butler = No more bad memories of natural language searches that went nowhere. 3. Vivisimo (the people who bring you Clusty) and MSN have signed a contract to provide search services for FirstGov, probably beginning next year. Previous FirstGov search providers were AT&T/FAST (2002-present) and Inktomi (2000-2002.) For a preview of how this will more or less work, visit Clusty Government Search. 4. Last, but not least, Google has dropped the “over 8 billion served” page count from its site. In a “happy birthday to us” posting on the Google Blog, they also claim that they are 3x larger than their Competitor-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named — i.e. Yahoo, which last month claimed it indexed 19 point something billion documents. So does Google index 60 billion pages? Nah … They claim that Yahoo’s count of 19 billion is bogus. Does all this really matter? Not from my point of view. Repeat after me: Relevance, Relevance, Relevance. If you’re interested, Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Watch has written an excellent article about the end of the size wars. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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September 26, 2005
| Understanding Hospitality Law, 4th Editon |
 By Jack P. Jefferies, Banks BrownUnderstanding Hospitality Law , Fourth Edition, is addressed to students and laypersons who are or may become involved in the lodging industry. This book alerts hotel and restaurant operators to a number of potential problems and pitfalls. The author's primary legal resources for this book come from many years of service to the American Hotel & Lodging Association and state hotel associations. Library Record • Borrow it • More Titles |
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Submitted by: Malgorzata Pawska, Digital Content Coordinator
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September 19, 2005
| Hackers looking to make a profit |
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That’s what the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report (released today) says. Twice a year Symantec releases a report summarizing and analyzing Internet Security Issues. This year the report shows a jump in identity theft type attacks. From January to June of this year, malicious code that exposed confidential information (bank account information, credit card numbers, etc.) represented 74% of the top 50 samples reported to Symantec, up from 54% in the last report. It appears that hackers and virus writers are no longer out to break your computer … they’re out to break your bank. This report can be downloaded for free at Symantec’s site after filling out a registration form. |
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Submitted by: Nicole Engard, Former Web Manager
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| Gas Tax Laws |
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Consult the CCH State Tax Guide for current laws on all states' gasoline and motor fuel taxes. |
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Submitted by: Nancy Garner, Assistant Director of Knowledge Services
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| Credit Repair, 7th Edition |
 By Robin LeonardThis book takes a methodical and thorough approach to repairing your credit, with step-by-step instructions and advice to fix even the worst credit record in the shortest possible time. If you have serious credit problems, you need this book. Library Record • Borrow it • Buy it • More Titles |
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Submitted by: Malgorzata Pawska, Digital Content Coordinator
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September 15, 2005
| Tit for Tat |
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Yesterday Google introduced blog search. So naturally today Yahoo had to make the news. Which they did by rolling out something called Instant Search, which gives instantly gives you the results for simple queries in a bubble. You don’t even have to click on the search button. First impressions? I’ll give it a B+. Works great for weather and stuff like that. However, I wanted to get a stock quote for Gillette. I typed in “g” — the company’s ticker symbol — but the bubble didn’t appear. So I continued spelling the company’s name. When I got to “gil” I saw a bubble for a company called “Gildan Activewear”. Hmm. I finally saw the bubble when I completed spelling “gillette”. With Google, all I had to type was “g”. And don’t hold your breath waiting for the bubble for a query like John G. Roberts. (When I typed the “john” part of the query, I got a bubble for an Oxford PhD candidate named John Huron.) One more thing. The bubbles are sticky — I often had to refresh the page to make them go away when I changed my query. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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