Vol. 1 Issue 9 - April. 1, 2002 - Search Engines that do More

  • Google's Wild Side      
  • Search Engines That Do More, Part 1 of 4: Vivisimo    

GOOGLE HAS A WILD SIDE AND YOU DIDN'T KNOW IT!

 

Usually search engines allow you to use an asterisk for wildcard searching. This means that looking for manage* will find instances of manager, manages, managed, managing and so on. Google has taken the position that their search is so vast and accurate that there is no need for a wildcard therefore they do not allow its use.

 

Well, we discovered an undocumented way to use so-called wildcard searching with Google. As with many other search engine concepts, Google again has broken the rules. In "Google terms" the * happens to be a wildcard that replaces an entire word, not just the last part of it, like in the above example.

 

If you use * connected to a keyword by any of the characters Google ignores like:

= , ; \ / < and > then * acts as a place setting or wildcard for "any words" like these:

 

my resume

 

This search yields over 2 million results, however...

 

"my resume"

 

returns 353,000 results. These 353,000 results are exactly the same for the following search strings: *my=resume, *my/resume, *my<resume and so on using the other characters Google ignores along with the asterisk. Note that instead of using the double quotations "like this" to search for a natural phrase, Google infers a phrase search when spaces are replaced with ignored characters. That is why my=resume and "my resume" yield identical results.

 

When inserting an asterisk into a phrase we find that Google is forced to return pages that contain the requested keywords only if they are adjacent to another word that could be any word because the asterisk serves as that "any word." Therefore:

 

My=*=resume

 

yields only 47,000 results, and brings back only pages where the word "My" and the word "resume" are separated by a word - any word - as long as it's a three word phrase. This is just like the ADJ command at AOL Search. For example, the equivalent search mentioned above for Google, is the following for AOL Search:

 

My ADJ resume

 

In Google, any ignored term works as long as the phrase is joined. So my=*=resume is

the same as my,*,resume and my<*>resume and so on.

 

The most useful aspect of this discovery is that if you use one more ignored term and another asterisk then it returns results with two words between "My" and "resume" like this:

 

My-*-*-resume

 

This search string returns fewer results--only 28,000 with two words separating "My" from "resume." The previous search: My=*=resume yields far more results--47,000 with only one word separating our two keywords.

 

Try this search by using different keywords related to resumes, such as: vitae, CV, skills, experience or combinations of unique skills.

 

SEARCH ENGINES THAT DO MORE, PART ONE

VIVISIMO: CLUSTERING SEARCH ENGINE

 

Searching isn't always an absolute matter. Sometimes there is a need for search engines that do more than just bring back surgical results. There are four examples of a new breed of search engines that provide additional benefits for recruiters besides long pages of links. Today we will cover the first of four examples--Vivisimo.

 

Although it may look like a meta-search, Vivisimo goes miles above and beyond simply getting content from other search services. What they do so differently is automatically cluster results into topics. Similar to the former Northern Light and InFind search engines, Vivisimo is more advanced because it's totally automated and extremely fast. It dynamically returns search results in relevant topic clusters. This differentiates Vivisimo from meta-searching because you can drill down through layers of categorization organized far more intelligently. I find a major selling point of this new search tool is that Vivisimo does not report results from "pay for placement" search engines, like other meta-searches do, hence you will find fewer commercial site results.

 

Clustering is indispensable when you want a complete overview of a topic or when you would like help narrowing your search. This is the only automated, hierarchical, conceptual, just-in-time clustering engine available today. Because it is automated, not manual, the categories are created on the fly, they are much narrower and particularly accurate. That's good for Competitive Intelligence and Recruitment Research, but read on to learn about other advantages.

 

Vivisimo removes "most likely" duplicates. In other meta-searches which attempt to remove duplicates they often slip into the results because they are not exact duplicates. They could be newer versions of pages or, for some reason, may have slightly different content. Vivisimo broadens the definition of a duplicate to cleverly remove results that would otherwise slip by meta-search scrutiny.

 

Another reason to take a serious look at Vivisimo is because it offers total control. Best results are obtained when searching with total control. Traditional meta-searches frequently fail to meet our expectations because they don't offer the granular control afforded by advanced field search commands like: image:, title:, url:, link:, host:, site:, domain:, related:, and text:. Vivisimo handles all those advanced field search commands, in addition to every form of Boolean such as "AND," "OR," "AND NOT" and even "NEAR".

 

If I haven't turned you on to Vivisimo yet, then this will cinch the deal--you can Save and E-mail your search results! Imagine how useful that is. In the past, saving and e-mailing was accomplished only with "heavy artillery" tools. Click on the "SAVE" link in the yellow frame at the bottom right corner of the Vivisimo screen and a new page is loaded that contains all the data in one file. You can save to disk the entire page, not just the link, or e-mail it directly from your browser. Netscape 4 does not save the page well, so use another browser to save it. You can use I.E. 5 or higher and Netscape 4 or higher to view the results.

Learn more about search engines here: http://www.searchenginewatch.com.