Practical 4 & 5

Topic: Discuss the latest trends and developments of computer technology

1) Search Engine
Search Engine Used: Google (www.google.com)

Keywords Used: "computer", "technology", "trend", "entertainment"

Purpose: Information

URL: 2005 Consumer Electronics Show Recap > Technology Trends< (http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=169628&rl=1)

Description of website:
This website contains an article on the different types of trend when it comes to technology. It separates the trends into categories such as Media Servers, Portable Entertainment and Telematics. It also does a comparision with companies under the same industry for example Creative and Ipod.

Search Results: 7,550,000 hits
Relevant Ranking Available: None
Relevant Results:
Results gotten did not meet the requirement of mine. Results returned are mainly like industry trends which does not fit the things that I am looking for.

Searching experience
By using this search engine by Google, i did not really get what I hope for. A lot of redundent sites being returned by the search engine even after a few attempt of changing the search keywords. I met a lot of diffculties and it resulted me wasting a lot of precious time that caused me to be stuck doing this portion of the accessment when everyone in the class is doing their reflection. A lot of changes in the keywords being used, need to search for better ways to enhance the performance of my searching ability.

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2) Meta Search Engine
Search Engine Used: Ixquick Metasearch

Keywords Used: "Computer", "technology", "trend"

Purpose: Business/Marketing

URL: TREND MICRO
(http://www.trendmicro.com/en/home/us/home.htm)

Description of website:
This website of a organization is a security company which sells things like firewall or anti-virus. The website works just like a typical computer hardware/software website where users is able to buy things online. Apart from that, it does provide news on blogs which make it a little like information website but the main purpose of this website is still a business/marketing.

Search Results: 11,499,685 hits
Relevant Ranking Available: Yes
Relevant Results:
For this search, the result gotten is very pleasing to see. It provides stars to rate how relevant the website they found has got to do with keywords that I have input. From the stars, I can immediately know which website will contain the information that I want.

Searching experience
Just on my first search using the keyword, I immediately got the result that I want and I would say it is very effective in term of their searching capability. What makes the website real good to me is that even when I use the same keywords I used in google, I got a much better result being returned rather than from google. Perhaps it lies with the fact that metasearch will search across multiple search engine which enables it to get the top few most relevant website being returned.

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3) Subject Directory
Search Engine Used: Yahoo! Singapore
Keywords Used: "technology", "news"

Purpose: News

URL: BBC NEWS Technology (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/default.stm)

Description of website:
This website is from a news organization from UK. It contains all the latest updates on the technology such as gaming and the upcoming operating system, Windows Vista. It also provides webcast of news and podcasting of news as well.

Search Results: 581,000,000 hits

Relevant Ranking Available: None

Relevant Results:
For this search, the result gotten is very impressive as all the results returned are relevant to what I am searching for. I could easily find any other websites which also contains the information I needed as everything is just a click away. One of the best search engine so far as it is able to reach out to as much as half a billion amount of websites.

Searching experience:
I had a very wonderful searching experience with yahoo as it provides the most relevant websites back to me given only 2 keywords is being entered. Although it lacks of the relevant ranking, it still does not lose out in term of their relevant of website. Although I may have found the website that I wanted, I could actually still narrow down by having more relevant keywords being search which might even return something which will surprise me.

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Reflections on Comparison and Evaluation on search effectiveness

Compare the search results. Identify 2 characteristics that make all 3 search facilities similar or different from one another.

Similarities:
1) All webpages allows the user to narrow down search by having another search method. For example: Yahoo (All The Web or Singapore), Google (Google Search or I'm Feeling Lucky), Ixquick(Search or Power Search).
2)All search engine provides multiple language

Differences:
Search Engine(Google)
1) Returns websites even though it is not very relevant
2) Results that are under another website will be indented

MetaSearch (Ixquick)
1)Provides result from all search engine and returns website of certain relevant
2)Provides ranking to state how relevant the website is to the keyword

Subject Directory (Yahoo)
1)Provides website of most relevant to the keyword even though returns huge amount of hits.
2)Provide features like Save webpage to My Web

Do you find any strength/weakness of each of them, in terms of search capability?

In yahoo and google search, both search engines have very good search capability in term of the relevant of the result being shown. Both engine produced almost the similar result. However, using the similar keywords searched, yahoo is able to find an estimated of 1/6 of what google is able to find. Therefore, yahoo is much more specific in the topic they looking for.
*test were carried out using the same keyword*

As in Ixquick meta search engine, it provides me all the most relevant website from several search engine. This will enhance it searching capability as sources came from all different search engine which means it covers a huge network of websites around the world.

Overall, which search facility best meet your searching needs? Why?

Yahoo! Singapore. After this exercise, I realise that the search engine that I have spend least is Yahoo. What do I mean by that? It is because this subject directory search actually able to return me the results that I want very quickly, at such, I do not need to spend much time changing the keyword that I have input or navigate from page to page just to find the website that I want. Therefore, I would rate Yahoo! Singapore as my ideal search facility that meets my searching needs.

Comment whether your research topic has any co-relation to the purposes of the resources retrieved.

Yes, the purpose of the search that I have gotten have relation to the topic that I am covering as all the information has inter-relation to computer technology, being security or operating system. I collect information of all purpose because in technology would, it is not reliable if a source is just taken from a website, for example a vendor as it may be one-sided. Therefore it is good if information can come from all purpose so that I can cross-reference from all sources to know if this information is reliable to what extent.