I have a story today that comes from my predilection to “self-syndicate”, meaning that I post my stories far and wide, in the same way a newspaper columnist is syndicated nationally—or beyond.

After I post, I know others will also post my stories to their sites, a topic that was itself the subject of a recent conversation.

To keep track of it all, I use the Google…but I recently wondered if that’s actually the most effective tool for the job—or not—so as an experiment I recently challenged several search engines to go out and seek the same search term.

We find out today…and the results are, indeed, interesting.

So here’s the rules of the game: on the afternoon and evening of November 29th, I posted my story “On Stimulating The Future, Or, “It’s The Ytterbium, Stupid!”” on 27 sites. The next morning I conducted the searches you’ll see referenced in this discussion using as a search term the exact words of the title, in quotes, just as it appears above. During the course of writing this story, we’ll revisit the same sites to see if the results have changed.

So the first search was conducted on Google, which found 849 results.

The reason that happens is because the tags associated with (or the proper nouns that appear in) a story often trigger websites to place that material on pages with other stories with matching tags or names, as you can see from this example at RootsWire. (The story appears twice because it was updated after it was posted.)

This creates lots of iterations of the same title on the same site under different categories, a situation other search providers seek to reduce; this being the one of the points behind all those recent ads for Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

A quick note about “search consistency”: seeking for the same search term at Google on multiple occasions will yield different results each time, even if the two searches are conducted immediately after one another. For example, my search this morning found 852 results—and then, just a few minutes later, 653. (By the way, if you click on these links now, some other number of results will appear, which is its own comment on consistency.)

We next visit Bing, where 16 results were initially found. Interestingly, some of the links were the ones I placed, but 6 of the 16 were multiple iterations of the same story on three sites.

As with Google, visiting Bing today might yield 57 links—or 2530, or 152, or 26—and despite Bing’s advertising claims that they make searching simpler by eliminating Internet “clutter”, a huge number of the links I’m seeing here are links to the weather in virtually every city in Maine; all of these linked back to “Weather Underground” weather reporting pages…and all of those pages were from the same basic address: insert name here.wunderground.com.

Next was Yahoo!, reporting 887 results (and then, after clicking through a few pages, 1580). There was an interesting variation to the pattern of what they found, however: more results from the first 50 were links to the original 27 postings than appeared to be the case with either Google or Bing.

The search today found 860 results…four times in a row…which is by far the most consistent results reporting so far—even if the results from the other day were completely different.

Lycos found 67 iterations of the posting…or 50……and then 49…with roughly a dozen of the first 30 listings being “duplicative” entries, which is fairly consistent reporting. Returning to the site today, the search engine found 69 listings—and it was also able to do that four times in a row….which makes it at least the “consistency equal” of Yahoo!

Dogpile (a product of the fine folks at Infospace) aggregates results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Ask.com into one set of results…and for some reason the first result on the second page was for a futures trading opportunity (“I’m shocked to discover there’s gambling here…!”).

That said, Dogpile “sniffed out” 40 results, with many of those being “duplicate” instances of the same story from the same site. Conducting the same search today yields 6 additional results—all of which appear to be duplicates of the previous 40.

On four further attempts to search, the original 40 results were found.

WebCrawler, another Infospace property, located 38 results; again, the results are highly duplicative. It is not possible to enter the entire search term at this site, instead, the term…

“On Stimulating The Future, Or, “It’s The Ytterbium,

…was used.

Four additional searches were conducted today, with 38 results found each time.

(Because the page-naming conventions of both Dogpile and WebCrawler insert an ! into the page names upon which results are presented, they can’t be linked here, and you’ll just have to visit the pages on your own.)

Altavista found 904 iterations of the story, then 17,800 on today’s search. There is an option to either search “Worldwide” or “USA”, the Worldwide search, conducted immediately after today’s USA search, found, oddly enough, 2460 results—and for at least the first several pages, which was as far as I looked, the results were the same as for the USA search.

Four additional searches, conducted today, located the same 17,800 results.

One strange idiosyncrasy of the site is that it won’t actually display those 17,800 results: instead, it only displays the first several pages of results (in this case, 7 pages), and then just stops, with no additional pages made available beyond that point. There is an “advanced settings” page available, but it does not offer any solution for this problem.

Ask.com displays 240 results on the first search—and they were the only site to report the listing on the Times of India site right there on the front page (which, if you return to the site, is no longer the case)—but on the down side, 1/3 of the results on that first page were “sponsored results”.

After the first page, ½ of all results are “sponsored”, and the results are highly duplicative. By page 10 of the results, as few as 2 of the 13 results on the page are not sponsored.

Today’s searches located 452 links, then 449, then 452, and then (take a guess…) 449.

Ever heard of Duck Duck Go? Neither had I before this story. They feature an unusual format that displays some results, and then, when you click “more results”, displays those below the first results on the same page; a pattern that continues until all results are displayed.

The Duck located 35 results on the first attempt, with no duplicates. The “wunderground” domain was represented—but only once.

Apparently recognizing that their searches are not going to give every result, the site encourages you to also search at YouTube, flickr, twitter, amazon, and Google.

Turning off the “safe search” feature yields 43 results, including BhamLinks.com (a news aggregator from Birmingham, Alabama), Pshcye’s Links, (“Esoteric Subjects on the Web”), and the “Li-Ion” page from the Journalism that matters site (Li-Ion, by the way, is the abbreviation used to describe lithium ion batteries.)

Conducting additional searches on the site today yields the same 43 results.

Finally, Cuil. I had never heard of this site before…and apparently, they’ve never heard of me, either, with zero results reported for my query. Searching the “127 billion web pages” they purport to scan today provided no results again during four additional checks—which makes this site the most consistent of the search engines I examined.

I conducted a test search for pizza (with no quotes). 809,000,000 results were found…but only two were displayed on the “All Results” tab: one for Pizza Hut, one for the Wikipedia entry for pizza (which featured the story of how pizza was introduced into Pakistan, of all things). Even more odd: on the same page you can look up “Pizza franchises” and other pizza related results “categories”, and there’s a “Timeline for Pizza” with entries like: “2004 Melbourne, Australia” and “1993 Pizza was”.

All of this appears to be at odds with the intent of the site’s operators:

“Popularity is useful, but has dominated search results so heavily that it gets harder and harder to find the page you want, especially if your search is a complex one. Cuil respects popular pages and recognizes that for many simple searches, popularity is an easy answer to your question. But for a deeper search, establishing relevancy is more than a numbers game. Cuil prefers to find all the pages with your keyword or phrase and then analyze the rest of the content on those pages…”

Those are the results: so, what about conclusions?

The first conclusion we can reach about all of this is that the number of results that any search engine locates on any particular visit are highly variable—and so much so that the number of results presented appears to be virtually random (with the notable exception of Cuil, which seems to be consistently unable to find anything).

With that said, if I was quickly looking for this particular story, it appears that some of the odd search engines might be the best choices, including Lycos, Duck Duck Go, and Ask.com.

On the other hand, if the idea was to determine how far a story has been distributed, Google seems to be the winner.

There is another reason to use search engines, that being to find information about a topic that you currently don’t know enough about; this test is not well suited to answer the question of which search engine is best for that purpose…and it’s a test that we’ll save for another day.

So that’s today’s story: we visit quite a few search engines, we learn that the results you get are almost always entirely unpredictable, and, in what might be the most important lesson of the day, we’re learning that deifying Tiger Woods can backfire on you, big time.

Recently I visited www.souq.com, a website I often use to buy and sell used items. I was surprised to see their new search box! It is the largest search box I have ever seen. And I think might be officially the largest search box on the web!

Usually people tend to dislike new interface changes with websites they frequently visit, and this what seems to have happened when I asked a few friends about their opinion about this change. But I think, this was the right move; Am sure 99% of users visiting this website, know what they are looking for and will search for it. The possibility of a user browsing through categories is very small. And am sure the website designers have pages’ visits data and they know already that. So if SEARCH is the focus, why not to make it bigger. Here they made it bigger not only in width but also in height, also to give more space for bigger font, now the input font is even bold.

Other search websites have already taken this step. The most popular move was from www.google.com

Google search box got bigger

Other examples also include Yahoo!

Old Yahoo! Search Box

New Yahoo! Search Box

And dogpile.com (a search-engine that returns results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask)

Dogpile Old Search box

Dogpile New Search box

Another interesting Big search box I have found, was in the beautiful Nike website

Nike Big Search Box

It seems that good websites today have adopted two design approaches which I find very important. First, more macro and micro white-spaces (this is a good short article about whitespaces). Seoncd, bigger fields. Specially when it comes to fields that need to be filled by users for searching or even for signing up. In one word, design became more focused.

Work From Anywhere

Ah, working at home… Visions of leisurely days, conference calls in comfy sweatpants, increased productivity with fewer interruptions. But the distinctions between work life and home life soon blur. You really should throw some laundry in the wash before you write that proposal. You have an hour before a meeting: Should you balance your books or clean the kitchen? And remember to call that client back right after you empty the cat box.

Welcome to the real world of working at home: unforeseen
distractions, a lack of structured time, and sometimes a perceived
loss of identity. But don’t give up the dream just yet! By putting
into place a few simple ideas, you can reap more of the rewards of
working at home. Based on my experiences and those of my associates, here are 10 simple ways to help you stay on track.

**1. Separate Your Space**

Keep a separate, distinct work area in your home. (This is especially difficult if you’re living and working in a small home with your Wife and Five Children, like I was when I started my business  in California!)If you don’t have a separate room, at least define an area, and know that when you’re in it, you’re in “work mode.” Make sure your roommates and family are
aware of this as well.

**2. Structure Your Time**

As your business and personal time mesh, it’s more important than
ever to structure your day. For example, if you regularly take a walk or go to the gym, try to do it every day at the same time. Value that personal appointment with yourself – even when you’re very busy. It will actually help you keep your business on track! I like to get up early and work until noon, then I take a few hours off to enjoy lunch, do some reading, and take my daily jog on the beach. Then I’m back at my desk at 4:00 until who knows when!

**3. Outsource All You Can**

When I began my business, I made the mistake of acting as my own courier service. I soon learned how much time I was wasting by visiting clients too much just to pick things up and drop them off. Whenever you start thinking, “Well I can do that myself,” STOP. Streamline your business, making everything as automatic as possible. Use outside services to stay focused on your *real work*. Get accounts with an overnight delivery service, messenger service, virtual assistant (VA), bookkeeper, etc. Save your energy for your brilliant ideas! : )

**4. Use Technology to Your Advantage**

In-person meetings are very valuable when appropriate, but schedule them sparingly. Try to do most of your business via phone, fax, and e- mail using the best equipment you can afford. For most home-based businesses, when you’re out of the office, you’re NOT making money. So it’s important that you can communicate flawlessly from where you are. And PLEASE do us all a favor and get separate lines/services for your phone, fax, and Internet! No one likes getting a busy signal.

(BONUS TIP: If your phone company offers voicemail, get it. Not only will your outgoing message sound more professional, but if you’re on an important call and don’t want to be disturbed, other callers can still leave you a message.)

**5. Group Your Errands**

Try to group your meetings and errands together to minimize your out- of-office time. Make a list in the morning of all the outside tasks you need done for the day, and attempt to complete them in one fell swoop. Even better, do what I do and designate just one day a week as your “blitz” day for errands and meetings. I like doing this, because then I need to get dressed up only one day a week! : )

**6. Stay Focused**

Make your workspace off-limits to other roommates or family members when you’re working. For you animal lovers, this may go for pets as well. (My cat Francine gets *very* jealous when I’m not giving her complete attention!) Keep all personal paperwork such as bills and magazines out of sight, so as not to distract you from your projects.

**7. Beware of Yappers**

Many of your friends and family will be immediately delighted when
they learn that you’re working at home. They picture you lounging on the couch, eating potato chips, and waiting for their calls. When they call you simply to chat, politely remind them that you’re working, and ask them if you can call them back after your day is over. It may take them awhile, but they’ll eventually “get it.”

**8. Work With Your Moods**

Keep track of your moods and productivity compared with the time of day. For example, if you find you’re more alert in the morning, use this time to make important calls and do your creative work. Take advantage of your natural cycles. If you feel better after an afternoon nap, go for it! (I’m a BIG proponent of the catnap. In fact, I may start a support group. : ))

**9. Suit Yourself**

To bring out your best work, make your environment perfect for YOU. How do you work best? With plenty of breaks, or with no interruptions? In silence, or with some light music in the background? On a cushy couch and coffee table, or at a business desk in an ergonomic chair? (My friends thought I was nuts when I spent $700 on my Herman Miller Aeron chair, but they quickly understood why once they sat in it! And my spine thanks me every day.)

Also, find some places you can do work when you need a change of scenery. How about the library, the park, or your neighborhood coffee shop? When I need to do serious reading, thinking, or editing, I take my work outside to the beach. The sea air, sunshine, and soothing waves help me think much more clearly.

**10. Break for People**

Feeling sluggish, lonely, or moody? Arrange for at least one social break during the week. (I aim for two or three.) Schedule breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even just coffee with a client, vendor, or friend. Join a business networking group, or sign-up for social activities such as dance class or recreational sports league. Don’t go into hermit mode – it can be self-destructive!

Rod Mix     800-206-3934  x3008

Video:  http://www.Better2LiveRich.info

Website: http://www.Better2LiveRich.com

Personal Development For Success: http://www.FTMlifestyle.com

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Danna Gabriela Campos Manzano
Tarea 7
1. Realiza una búsqueda sobre la temática de tu proyecto final en dos de los buscadores o metabuscadores mostrados en la presentación . Por favor evita seleccionar Google y utiliza recursos alternativos. Evita la duplicación de recursos con tu compañero de equipo.
2. Publica una entrada en tu blog con las siguientes características:
a. Título de la entrada= a nombre de los buscadores seleccionados. Ejemplo: Dogpile y Metacrawler.
b. Cuerpo de la entrada: una comparación de ambos sistemas de búsqueda que incluya :
i. Campos de búsqueda
ii. Uso de los operadores lógicos (cuántos y cuáles)
iii. Cantidad de documentos obtenidos
iv. Calidad de los documentos obtenidos.

3. Etiquetas para esta entrada: nombre de los buscadores, id, tarea7.
4. Agrega los buscadores a tu sección de recursos de información.
5. Fecha y hora límite de entrega: Domingo 18 de octubre hasta las 23 hrs.

Campos de Búsqueda
MetaCrawler y DogPile son campos de búsqueda bastante parecidos en su forma de operar, aunque estéticamente DogPile es el mejor, en cuanto al apoyo de otros recursos de apoyo de búsqueda, MetaCrawler es el más completo utilizando el apoyo de Bing, Google, Yahoo y Ask.

Uso de Operadores Lógicos
Para empezar, aunque los Operadores Lógicos existen, si no hay una cultura del uso de operadores lógicos entre los usuarios comunes de “Google” por ejemplo, mucho menos la hay en metabuscadores.
Cantitdad de Documentos Obtenidos
Con respecto al tema de nuestro Proyecto Final sobre la Influencia de la Música en la Sociedad, en MetaCrawler se encontraron en total 48 resultados; en cuanto a DogPile, se encontraron 21 resultados en total.
Calidad de Los Documentos Obtenidos
En Ambos Metabuscadores la Calidad de los resultados es en su mayoría publicidad y foros de discusión y los demás resultados si son de la información deseada pero dicha información no es muy confiable, por lo tanto la calidad de estos resultados que de por sí son muy pocos es baja y poco fiable.

Tools, tools, and more tools are coming my way. Here are a few, in case your are interested:

Remember Google Zeitgeist?  (At one time it changed hourly to show what was hot.)  Dogpile Searchspy?  (Which was better when it started, got hammered by spammers, but seems to be getting better again?)  10 by 10?

What all of these had in common was that they showed trends, particularly what was “hot.”  Some new tools help do the same thing, but use Twitter as a base, so the “hotness” is even hotter:

• Twopular is similar to Zeitgeist, but keywords are from Twitter rather than Google
• Trendsmap is a mashup that shows hot trendwords geographically using a resizable map
• Tweetworks tracks groups and discussions by topic
• Twonvo threads specific conversations

Some tools are similar, but not entirely Twitter based

• Lazyfeed is a topical aggregator
• AlphaInventions faciliatates both traffic development and real-time introductions to bloggers

One other point: the most difficult part of writing for me is dialog.  And, in many ways, except for marketing your work, development of dialog is the most important part.  These threading tools show dialogs as they develop in real time, and they can be a source of ideas for dialog development for writers.

The search engine Bing is relatively new, as is this site. No it can’t be done with Google. It can’t be done with Yahoo, or Dogpile. Only with Bing.

If you search marikaib in Bing, you get one result: my post on making connections.
…I just thought that was super cool.

One fun thing that came through my Twitter stream while at SMX East (it can’t all be serious).

Google “search engine” to see what shows up. My guess was it would be Wikipedia. I was wrong.