Module Four - Boolean searching tasks

Task: find the following using the search term "advanced internet users" = 'aiu'

To get the biggest number of hits relating to "advanced internet users" I choose to use the boolean or implied boolean operator AND. I did this because the phrase was "Advanced Internet Users' not 'advanced' 'internet' 'users'. Not internet users, but advanced internet users. In looking for "advanced internet users" we are not looking for general internet users, or advanced users of any kind other than of "the internet".

• the biggest number of hits relating to 'aiu'
1. Google Advanced Search - Results 1 - 10 of about 45,200,000 English pages for advanced internet users. (0.11 seconds)
2. Clusty - Top 216 results of at least 2,990 retrieved for the query "advanced+internet+users"
3. Dogpile - 1 - 20 of 62 Results for "advanced internet users". Search Engines: Google, Yahoo Search, MSN Search, Ask.
4. Windows Live Academic - advanced+internet+users 1 - 3
5. Seekz - 1 - 10 of at least 54,500,000 results for advanced+internet+users.
   
6. Surfwax - Displaying 27 of about 74,900,000 pages found.

Surfwax Results Stats - Prepare: 12 milliseconds, Search: 5998 milliseconds, Processing: 19 (16 for safety checking)milliseconds, Display: 20 milliseconds, Total Time: 6049 milliseconds.

[Found: 41, Displayed: 27, Invalid: 12, Bandwidth: 1, Duplicates: 1, Stale: 0 ]
Yahoo: source not currently returning results (100)
AllTheWeb: 10 pages found in 367 ms (parsed in 2 ms)
WiseNut: 10 pages found in 336 ms (parsed in 1 ms)
YahooNews: source not currently returning results (6)
CNN: 10 pages found in 905 ms (parsed in 8 ms)
LookSmart: 11 pages found in 2831 ms (parsed in 3 ms)
MSN: source not currently returning results (100)

• sources relating to skills-based information on 'aiu'

This question is a little loose for my liking. What 'skills-based information' on "advanced internet users" am I looking for.

• Google - Results 1 - 10 of about 260 English pages for skills and"advanced internet users". (0.50 seconds)
  

Using Google I've found my own, Dewa's and many other past and present NET11 student blogs.

Now I will look at different types of skills-based information relating to "advanced internet users"

1. Your search - skills-based "advanced internet users" -net11, -assessment, -module, -net -11 - did not match any documents.
2. Google - Results 1 - 10 of about 188 English pages for skills OR based OR ftp "advanced internet users" -net11, -assessment, -module, -net -11. (0.40 seconds)
3. Google - Results 1 - 10 of about 25 English pages for ftp "advanced internet users" -net11 -assessment -module -net -11. (0.06 seconds)
   
4. Google - Results 1 - 10 of about 407 English pages for skills OR based OR email "advanced internet users" -net11, -assessment, -module, -net -11. (0.37 seconds
5. Google - Results 1 - 2 of 2 English pages for "advanced internet users" telnet -net11 -assessment -module -net -11. (0.35 seconds)

I chose to try an eliminate any student blogs, which appear to have been reasonably successful, more so than finding skills based information for advanced internet users.

• information on 'aiu' coming only from university sources

1. Google Advanced Search - Results 1 - 10 of about 4,140,000 English pages for advanced+internet+users+university. (0.12 seconds) - the term "university" doesn't mean the results will be from university sources.
   
2. Google Advanced Search Australia - Results 1 - 10 of about 498,000 for advanced+internet+users+university. (0.10 seconds) - the term "university" doesn't mean the results will be from university sources.
3. Google Advanced Search - Results 1 - 10 of about 376 English pages for college OR university "advanced internet users". (0.07 seconds) - the term "university" doesn't mean the results will be from university sources.
4. Google Advanced Search - Results 1 - 3 of 3 English pages from edu.au for university "advanced internet users". (0.28 seconds) - the search terms "university" & "edu.au" means the results will be from Australian universities.
   

The above results vary greatly. If I did similiar searches on the differing search engines that I used in the previous task I would likely get varied results as above. Any sort of database searching involves constant modification and often narrowing of search terms.

I don't require any results that are not in English. If I require results relating to Australian Universities, I wouldn't use the term "college(s)" as in Australia we call our government run academic tertiary institutions "universities". ie Curtin University.

The term "college" is generally considered to be an American term for their tertiary institutions, or for many of our secondary schools.

If I wanted to cover all tertiary institutions I would then start adding search terms such as "tafe(s)", which would widen the search. I would definitely contain my search to australia and I would also use as a search term "edu.au", which would narrow my search.