Search Engines

For this third essay we were assigned to do research for the Web 2.0 technology that we had picked for our final essay. During the past week of class we have been speaking about search engines, and the reliability of them websites in which it returns. In this paper I will speak of the different results I received from the various search engines, as well as the relativity of the search. The Web 2.0 technology that I had chosen to research is www.facebook.com, because of the usefulness it has in my life. I will be conducting background searches using www.google.com, www.yahoo.com, and www.aj.com. I will also try to find information about this social networking site on Ebsco, a resource we have here at the University at Albany.

First I tried good old Google. This was an easy place to start considering Google is my search engine of choice, and usually returns some quality information. I decided to start this search off with the keyword Facebook. The first couple returned links directed me to the actual Facebook website, followed by the Wikipedia page for the social networking website. Wikipedia always gives you a solid base of background information about a topic, which is why; it is quickly becoming one of the most visited websites. (O’Reilly 2, P.2) It then gave me links for the company profile of Facebook, and finally to the New York Times Website, which surprisingly didn’t return me the information that I thought it would. I did not see any useful articles that would provide me with quality information about Facebook. There was on entitled, “Thanks to Facebook, Your Childhood in Park Slope in the ’80s Never Has to End” which focused on the functions of Facebook as a way to connect to old friends. Next was a webpage from Mashable, which provided great information about the background of Facebook. Satisfied with my first bunch of results, I then decided to change my keyword search to “History Facebook.” Returned first was the mashable article, as well as one from the International Herald Tribune speaking about the history, and lawsuit Facebook is now going through. It then had a hit from Connie Crosby’s personal blog, where she chose to some research on the history of Facebook, and provided a couple links in which she felt were useful. (the mashable one was first again) To be quite honest I was very happy in the results that Google produced for me, and it seems to me that all of the websites were very credible, and reliable.

Next I ventured over to Google’s biggest rival Yahoo. Yahoo is more of an interactive website in which you can login and it will produce news, and sports information that is designed for your characteristics. I tend to use Google for its straight forward approach to searching, but Yahoo certainly offers a lot more, so I am interested to see the successfulness of these searches. To be fair, I decided to use the same two keywords in which I used in my Google searches. Much to my surprise the results were not as effective as the Google results; there were no links to newspaper articles, or even some of the same articles I found useful from the Google search. I had the notion in my head that Google and Yahoo basically returned the same information when the same keywords are used. So I went ahead and added the word history to my search, and still no quality information. There was a Rolling Stone piece on the fight for the rights of Facebook, and even a hyperlink to a Facebook group for students having trouble with History. I was and am very disappointed in the search results that Yahoo produced. The very little information that I found to be useful took many pages of search results to find, and much more time then the Google search from earlier.

Lastly I tried www.aj.com hoping for some quality results, and for the initial search of the word Facebook, none were returned. More hyperlinks were provided to the actual website, the login page, as well as a part of the site for developers. So I went ahead and added “history,” hoping to find some valued information and a hyperlink to Chronical.com then directed me to that same informative www.mashable.com website. At least Ask Jeeves found some way to direct me to that website, unlike Yahoo. There seems to be many articles about the offers numerous offers Yahoo, and Google made to buy the site. There were a couple other Websites in which I failed to accept as credible because of the many advertisements on the side columns, as well as lack of credit to an author. Overall this was a fairly unsuccessful search.

The next place I choose to visit were the scholarly resources that our own University Library has to offer. I decided to use Ebsco, a database which searches the many scholarly journals that the University owns. Here is where quality information is to be found. Again I used the same two keywords, and right off the bat everything that is returned it from either a scholarly journal or a newspaper. From the search engines, the initial search of just the word Facebook didn’t really bring me much success, but on Ebsco there is a ton on quality information. I then added the word “history” and there were a bunch great results. One article called “About Facebook” I would certainly use, and in my opinion it is the best one I had seen during this whole experiment. Also returned was an article from Newsweek called “The Next Small Thing” which spoke about the advancements these social networking sites like Facebook have made, and predicting where it might go next. The problem I feel with these database searches is you receive a lot of great information regarding many different aspects of search, but never exactly what you want.

There were many things in which I learned from this activity on search engines. I gained access to many informative websites, and this activity encouraged me to go out and try other search engines that I would usually avoid. Not to my surprise, www.google.com retrieved me the most quality information. Many of the other search engines returned me websites with advertisements all over, people trying to sell me things, and even blogs that would not be appropriate for research use. I do believe that searching the library databases may take a little bit longer, the quality of the information is top notch. I would say using more descriptive keywords, such as “history Facebook” really helped the success of the searches. I deciphered through a lot of information during these searches, and I honestly believe that Google, and Ebsco are the best tools for gathering quality, reliable information.

O’Reilly, Tim. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. Retrieved August 21, 2008 from http:/www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30.what-is-web-20.html