by Web Minister, February 6, 2001
Internet search engines are more useful to MIM web site users than ever before. Researchers using Netscape or Internet Explorer can click on the "search" icon on their browser tool bars.
Several years ago, Infoseek was the best search engine for precise searches. Now that honor may go to Google. An especially important improvement is Google's ability to see URLs that include .php scripts that pull up text files. This means that not all files on a web site have to be in HTML and Google will still find some of them.
MIM article links turned up by search engines
|
Words searched for |
MIM search |
Google search |
Altavista |
Netscape |
|
Ireland |
38 |
32 |
6 |
3 |
|
Tibet |
31 |
20 |
7 |
2 |
|
anti-Semitism |
20 |
11 |
6 |
2 |
|
social-imperialism |
58 |
42 |
5 |
3 |
|
Dennis Rodman |
3 |
3 |
2 |
0 |
|
"labor aristocracy" and Stalin |
175 |
160 |
24 |
3 |
In general, MIM's own installed search tool on the home page at
www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/search.html will turn up more documents than other search engines. On the other hand, the Google advanced search is a far more powerful tool to find the exact document one is looking for.MIM will explain how to use Google to search just the MIM site.
1. Click "search" on your browser or go to www.google.com
2. Chooose Google as your search engine.
3. Conduct any search if needed to get to the Google home page or if already there, select the "advanced search" hyperlink either above or to the right of the search box.
4. Put the word "MIM" in the "with all the words" the words box and also "Ireland" as an example.
5. Skip down to domains and type in "etext.org".
6. Hit the "Google Search" button in the upper right. (Do not go too far down.)
Click here to see what Google's advanced search looks like
Of all the major search engines, Google finds the most pages on MIM's web page fastest. The phrase "Bob Avakian" nets 9 MIM web pages on Google and 11 on MIM's home page search engine.
Careful reading of the Google advanced search options shows why it is easier to whittle down a search using Google than MIM's own search tool installed on its web page. The MIM search for "Ireland" will turn up 38 search terms, but if we exclude all articles that mention the word "IRA" in Google, then we only have to look through 19 articles.
Altavista
Altavista at
www.altavista.com offers an advanced search capability too. The link is right under the main search box.The problem with Altavista is that unlike the engine on MIM's home page and Google, Altavista only recognizes MIM's HTML pages. On the plus side, Altavista does allow date searching as well.
To use the Altavista advanced search on MIM's web site, type in "www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext and Tibet" for example. "And" is a so-called boolean word. It forces any search engine to find documents that must include both what is before and after the "and." So MIM forces search engines to find MIM's home page and Tibet.
Microsoft has another search engine under its own name at
http://search.msn.com/advanced.asp .Netscape
Netscape's own web search engine does recognize MIM's non-HTML pages, but we are not sure what makes Netscape decide to index a page. Too few pages turn up when using Netscape and boolean logic. It seems that sometimes Netscape is actually using the Google search engine in any case.
Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves can be the most thorough search, but we find it is rarely worth the trouble. Even after entering MIM's entire homepage URL and the word "Tibet," we hardly get very many useful links back from "Ask Jeeves."
GoTo
We have always found GoTo to be useless for precise searches. Even typing in "www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext and Tibet" brings up nothing except one phony link.
Excite
Excite is more precise than "GoTo," but Excite is still overly broad, even in the advanced search mode. Excite makes for a mediocre engine, but the name at least is accurate. When someone is out of ideas, Excite will connect a precise search to other things not originally intended--to "excite" one's interests in a broad way.
Conclusion
If one goes to the
www.netscape.com home page and looks for the possible searches, Google is one of many. MIM recommends that it's readers search for MIM-related material using Google. Google has the best combination of breadth and precision.