Research Journal Part 8: Types of Information: FOcus on Search Engines and Web Sites

Search Tools: DuckDuckGo

Search Features:

1.      If you are not getting the results you want from DuckDuckGo there is the option to change to a different parts of different search website right there on the DuckDuckGo website.

2.      You can choose to search by date from the before you do a search, so your results will come already sorted.

3.      They also are a non-tracking website. They do not send user’s information to the websites that they use. It is a much more secure way to search online. I will very likely use this search tool in the future.

4.      They are also a non-bubble website. Other sites return results to your search based upon your search history. The more your results match the more often you will get the same type of results. You get stuck in a bubble of the same type of information that is different from the bubble of information that each other person has. You could be missing out on important information because it isn’t something you normally look for.

5.      They also have a translation forum, where users can help to translate pages. It seems like a very slow and time consuming process. I’m sure that translations have to be checked and double check, but I feel like because users choose to translate sites to improve DuckDuckGo’s access to translations that they are doing to make the site better instead of doing it because they are getting paid for it.

Metasearch Tools: Dogpile

Search Features:

1.      Dogpile has a search filter that filters out none, a moderate level, and a heavy level of explicit content from your searches. Under preferences you can select what level of filter you want applied to your searches. This could be especially helpful if you are researching something that is similar to an explicit topic. The search could be set up to exclude possible explicit material related to your topic.

2.      You can turn on “bold search terms.” If you do that than your search term would be bolded on the results page. This would allow you to see the relationship between the results the website returns and the search terms that you used.

3.      You can choose to automatically sort your results by a variety of options including: relevance, alphabetical, highest rating, most reviewed, and has offers. You can choose to sort it in a way that would find you the best information for your search topic.

4.      You can also choose a preferred location for local search. If you are looking for information related to a specific area, then being able to narrow it within your search from the beginning could save you a lot of time.

5.      Dogpile has all of the advanced search options that we looked at in the deep web data bases such as ProQuest and EBSCOHost. You can include all of your search words as a phrase or in any order, you can search any of your search terms, you can choose words you don’t want to use and you can include or exclude specific domains in your search.

Subject Directories: Complete Planet: The Deep Web Academic Info

Search Features:

1.      Right away I noticed that Complete Planet is described as an, “in-depth directory (that) is a roundup of the best and most useful links and resources within a specific subject area.” They could just be saying that, however it seems like a good start.

2.      They think about accessibility, authoritative sources, and ease of use and aim to be unbiased in regards to their subject guides.  It seems like someone or many someone’s are putting a lot of time into ensuring that these are a good, accurate representation of the subjects that they do cover. There are however limited on the number of subject that they cover. This would be a great place to start from if they have the subject you are looking for.

3.      They give you the ability to browse by subject. This would be a really great way to topic search something if you don’t know what you want to research.

4.      You can also browse by high school and college degree levels. This would be extremely helpful because if you are going for your Doctorate or PhD then you would probably have no interest in information for high school students and vice versa.

5.      I did a search for Patriot Act on their page because it was not listed as a subject and it returned four possible articles. Of the four I could immediately tell from the short description that one was not relevant because it referred to the Patriot League a student-athlete program. The other three seemed relevant however, below each site name and description it said Anonymous (not verified.) I explored each of those sources and realized that even though those subject guides were not considered verified, they contained links to websites whose information I would trust to use as a source; including government and academic websites.