Practical 4 & 5

This weeks practical is to identify and evaluate the effectivenesss of different types of Internet search facilities


Activity 1



Variations to my keywords.

Keyword Keyword variations



IT Information Technology



Trends Development, Style



Informatics science of information



Entertainment Leisure







Phrase include keyword and variations



List the variations to your keywords.


IT, informatics and entertainment trends.




Records of finding

Type of research facility: Search Engine - Google
Keywords used : IT, trends, entertainment
URL of resource: http://www.slis.indiana.edu/news/story.php?story_id=1175
Comment: 300 000 hits, have many related topics to choose from, although the large number also constitute many irrelevant hits.


Type of research facility: Meta search engine - Metacrawler
Keywords used: IT, development, entertainment
URL used: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/7657/20918/00969725.pdf?
arnumber=969725
Comment: 84 hits, much lesser than before, but due to the fact that the results branch from several sources. There were some results that weren't on the top pages of google.

Type of research facility: Search directory - Yahoo directory
Keywords used: Style, informatics, entertainment
URL used: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod
Comment: Only 13 hits, considerably smaller than both, but are also more relevant in comparison


Comparison and Evaluation on search effectiveness

I have used similar keywords, and the word entertainment stays as a constant in all 3 searches. However, subject directory is human compiled where search engine and meta search are computer compiled. As for similarities, the website all uses keyword as a guide to return search results.

Strength/weakness in each of them, in terms of search capability.

Meta search engine is better in some cases as it includes the results from multiple search engines. Where else search engine like google yield a much larger hit size. While subject directory is properly categorized, so its results are more relevant and accurate.