Popular Search engines

Main search engines

Google http://www.google.com/

Yahoo! http://search.yahoo.com/

MSN/Live http://www.live.com/

Ask http://ask.com/

Smaller ones

Exalead http://exalead.com/

Gigablast http://www.gigablast.com/

Market shares of search engines

Google is the most important search engine in the Netherlands with a of market share of more than 90%. In the Netherlands, Google is synonymous for search!

In the US the picture slightly more balanced, but Google is the most important player, and still gaining in market share. Google had a market share of about 56%, Yahoo! 22% en MSN (Live) only 10%. With a very small percentage remaining fot he hunderds of other search engines. In Spain Google has a market share of 99% of all web search actions. Only in South Korea and China Google isn't the search market leader. In China Baidu is the flavour of the day, whereas Naver is the most popular search engine in south Korea.

Why is the market share of search engines important?

Market share determines the income of the search engines, and thus the resources to invest in new developments. The Search Engine market is highly competitive. Who remembers the days that, Altavista or AllTheWeb were the main search destinations on the Web?

Search tips

• Use the advanced search pages and learn the search engine commands!
• Vary your search engine
• Use specific terms
• Search for specific file types
• Use more terms
• Limit on languages
• Use specific Internet parts

Essential search commands or prefixes

Searching with Phrases

Works on all search engine similarly (has become the standard in databases such as Web of Science, OvidSP and Scopus)

Compare [Avian influenza virus] with [\"avian influenza virus\"]

Within strings you can search in Google and Yahoo! with 'wild cards'.

[Christmas * turkeys]. Only Exalead has even better wild card search options, eg. [library catalog*]

AND, OR, NOT are: + | -

Boolean search operators are available on all search engines. AND is the standard.

OR use capitals, or the half pipe symbol: | (eg. [catalogue OR catalog])

Excluding terms is an essential search engine technique [\"heavy metal\" pollution -music -rock -hardrock]

In the advanced search pages the following boolean operators are presented as follows:

Nesting

Essential part of a good search strategy is nesting of terms. This works only in Yahoo! and Exalead.

[(children OR teens OR boys OR girls) (fat OR overweight OR heavy OR obese) (disease OR ill OR illness OR health)]

Limiting on File type

Google: filetype: of ext: (eg:[tomatoes ext:pdf], or [\"agaricus bisporus\" filetype:pdf]

Yahoo!: originurlextension: (eg:[cherry tomatoes originurlextension:pdf]

Live: filetype: (eg:[budget university filetype:xls])

Search within a website

A very powerful command that comes in handy with badly constructed websites, or websites with a limited search engine.

[\"lecture rooms\" site:wur.nl] or when you want to gauge the size of a website [site:library.wur.nl] cf [site:wur.nl]

Search within titles

When you are really overwhelmed by results, limit your search for title words only

[intitle:mushroom] combine this command with a string [intitle:\"edible mushroom\"]when you have more words or use the following Google option: [allintitle:agaricus bisporus]

Limit on numerical ranges

Searching for recent years by specifying a year range eg:[\"agaricus bisporus\" 2003..2005]

Scientific Search engines

Additional information

Google Tips & Tricks

Google Cheatsheets

UC Berkeley Library

Karen Blakeman's search engine comparison schart

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