LAW PRACTICE TIPS

Search for the Perfect Search Engine
By Jim Calloway, Director
OBA Management Assistance Program

We lawyers tend to do a lot of research. The ability to do good research is one of the aspects of legal training that makes lawyers successful in other types of occupations.

What exactly is research? It is a "diligent inquiry or examination in seeking facts or principles; laborious or continued search after truth; as, researches of human wisdom" according to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary.

To some individuals the term Internet research seems like an oxymoron. Learning that there are 202,311 responses to your search query is about as bad as not locating any in their opinion. It is fairly easy to use the Internet to locate the latest news about Britney Spears or a recently released movie, but it seems harder to do "serious" research online. But we all understand that there is a huge amount of government, business and personal information online.

Several OBA resources can help hone the lawyer's online research skills.

Our online OBA CLE program "How to do Real Research on the Internet- For Lawyers" is still available for online purchase and viewing.

We have a great Internet Directory that more and more of our members are using.

As our members only online service, OBA-NET is evolving and changing, (more about that next month!!) we have moved our OBA-NET Web Site of the Week to a more accessible place online and it is now available to everyone. Just go to the Management Assistance Program page of our bar Web page (www.okbar.org/map) and click on OBA-NET Web Sites of the Week. With reviews of over 150 Web pages in our online archives, you should find some sites that are new to you. Not all of these are law-related, but they are all interesting (to me, at least.)

So those are three existing ways for Oklahoma lawyers to get a head start on honing their Internet research skills.
The Internet is truly the greatest collection of information compiled in one "place" perhaps in the history of mankind. As we've noted before, while it may be the best library ever invented, the card catalog is often lacking.

But that observation is not as true as it once was. Internet search engines and directories now do provide a card catalog of sorts for the Internet. So this month we are going to discuss Internet directories, Web portals and Internet search engines.

Internet Directories

Internet directories are the most simple to discuss, so let's cover them first.

Directories are essentially sets of Internet links organized by subject by the creator of the directory. The most famous of these is Yahoo. With a directory, you see an outline format and can drill down with mouse clicks to more specific areas until you get to a sub-set of links in just the area you wish. These are truly useful when you hit the exact subject matter of your area of interest or research.

Lawyers deal with the law and the facts. Our research is more focused and must be accurate.

The most comprehensive Web directory for factual research is www.refdesk.com. I have mentioned this before in previous articles, but this is truly one amazing site. This is a Web site that I usually visit every single day, always as a starting point on the way to find something else online.

Again, if you want to use a directory designed for lawyers, the Internet directory that our department has designed to be useful for Oklahoma lawyers is located at here.

There are many, many Web directories online that are tailored for those with an interest in the law. But even these can be quite diverse. Just by way of example, I will mention a few:

www.findlaw.com
One of the oldest and most comprehensive sites, now owned by West Group.

www.firstgov.gov
The  federal government's portal to its many sites.

www.courts.net
The directory of court Web sites.

www.insure.com
A portal with news and links on insurance information.

www.state.ok.us
The official Oklahoma government Web site.

http://lii.org/
The Librarians Index to the Internet.

I am fairly sure that everyone reading this article has visited at least one of these sites.

The main thing to understand about directories is that they are organized and maintained by flesh and blood people rather than merely by automated computer techniques, like the search engines. This means that even the best directory will likely index many fewer pages that a search engine, but the content will generally be much more focused and useful.

Portals

A portal is not so easily defined. Internet directories that are combined with search engines and other original content are called portals. Yahoo still looks like a traditional Web directory, but it would clearly qualify as a portal with all of its services and features, like instant messaging and chat. Other portals like Microsoft's www.msn.com feature much more news and original content along with other features like stock quotes, games and shopping. There is really no clear distinction that makes a site a portal. It is a combination of many services and features.

Search Engines

Search engines are extremely powerful tools. Most everyone is familiar with how they operate from the user side. A visitor types in a word or series of words in an online form and then a series of links to pages containing some or all of these words are returned to the user. Given the amount of information online today, it is not unusual for a simple search to return hundreds of thousands of links in response. Typically only the first ten will be actually listed, with an option to go to the next ten and the next thereafter.

Search engines are important as well because the Web is constantly changing. A resource you located a year ago may not be there today.

When I mentioned that I was writing on this topic to a trained Internet researcher, her response was, "That will be short. Just say 'use Google.'"

While that comment was meant in jest, there is a lot of truth in it. Most net-savvy lawyers use Google as their main search engine. If you have never visited www.google.com, you should try it for your next search.

For the last year or so, each new entry into the search engine field has been accompanied by speculation as to whether this would be the "Google killer" or when it could "dethrone" Google. So, if you are one of those who did not even know that Google was currently on the throne, you need to learn what you are missing.

Google indexes approximately three billion Web documents. This is generally considered to be far more than any other Internet search engine indexes, although, like many such claims there are some who wish to debate it. (Indexing Web pages is a process that is similar to creating a deposition index.)

But the two things that make Google superior to other search engines are the blazing speed of its returns and the relevancy rankings. Simply put, if you do a Google search, you usually get your results within a couple of seconds and the site you were seeking is often in the first ten links listed on the first page, even though there may be hundreds of thousands of pages returned.

Jim Reese, Google's Chief Operations Engineer, recently noted in an online interview that the plan is for Google to be not only the best search engine, but only a search engine. They do not intend to add other features and become a portal. Google exists on 10,000 servers and handles over 50 million searches a day.1 It is frankly amazing that thousands of queries per second are handled so quickly, many in less than a second.

Because Google is such an outstanding search engine, it is easy to use it for all sorts of things that almost seem like an overuse or a misuse. But if the search technique gets you the result you want in the faster manner, it cannot be a misuse.

For example, if you want a person's listed phone number, there are many great people locator Web sites online.2 It is easy to locate phone numbers through these sites. But if you type their name, city and state into Google, you usually get the person's phone number and address as the first result returned as well as links to Yahoo! Maps and MapQuest in case you want to draw a map to their house. If you want to draw a map to a location through MapQuest, it is often faster to type the address into Google and click the link for the address on MapQuest than to obtain it by entering MapQuest through the main home page.3

Although most of us use the main Google page for all searches, there are many interesting specialized types of searches available there.

For example:

Google Catalog (in beta test version) allows you to search mail order catalogs.

Google Uncle Sam limits queries to government Web pages.

Google Images gives you thumbnail versions of many graphic images online based on your word searches.

Google Groups allows searches of messages posted to discussion forms including the Usenet archive spanning back 20 years. There are over 700 million messages contained here.

Google News provides current events searching.

Google Translate will limit Web page searching to only certain pages or actually translate a Web page you have located from one language into another language. (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese) There are dozens of Google sites for other countries and Google interfaces for many other languages.

Larger law firms should be aware that Google has commercial products that can be used to search through documents in-house by law firm personnel. With so many law firms intently focusing on their knowledge management systems, this may be an interesting option.4

Another great feature of Google is the cached Web pages. A Web page may have been removed from the Internet, but you may be able to still locate a copy on Google.

But, while Google is certainly my search engine of preference, it is not the only search engine nor is it the only one that a lawyer should use. Current studies suggest that the best search engines only index ten percent or less of the World Wide Web. So for more obscure research topics, there may be sites that have indexed pages which Google has not.

It is beyond my expertise (and, more importantly, my time constraints) to exhaustively list the major search engines of the hundreds that exist online. But others do devote extensive time to research these types of issues.

According to SearchEngineWatch.com,5 the major search engines are:

AllTheWeb.com (also known as FAST Search) - http://www.alltheweb.com
AltaVista - http://www.altavista.com
AOL Search- http://search.aol.com (Recent news reports indicate Google now supplies the "engine" for this one.)
Ask Jeeves - http://www.askjeeves.com
Google - http://www.google.com
HotBot - http://www.hotbot.com
Inktomi - http://www.inktomi.com
LookSmart - http://www.looksmart.com
Lycos - http://www.lycos.com
MSN Search - http://search.msn.com
Netscape Search- http://search.netscape.com
Open Directory - http://dmoz.org
Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com

SearchEngineWatch.com is a well-respected authority, containing numerous articles on everything you could imagine about search engines, from advanced searching techniques to tips on improving your Web site placement within the search engines.

If you want to know just how important it is to have a short list of the major search engines, spend some time browsing the long list at www.allsearchengines.com.

There are some other topics to cover like the Invisible Web and meta-search engines, but I'm afraid that part of the article will tax the patience of some readers. So I'll first cover tips for your online searching.

Tips for Power Internet Searching

1. Never use a search engine when a Web directory will do better.

When you learn how to use search engines well, there is a temptation to use them for everything and when you only seek one fact, that is usually best. But the customized and carefully tended Web directory are often far better when you seek reliable, focused information or want a general overview. If you wanted good information on skeet shooting or hang gliding, you are better off to go to Yahoo and drill down into the recreation topics. With luck, you will locate some Web directories limited to just this topic. If you want to find what information is online for a court in another jurisdiction, the OBA Web directory should be your first stop.

2. Start with Google

Sure we discussed alternatives and options, but don't miss the main point. You can find almost anything you can imagine online quickly and easily by putting a good search query into Google. Start there.

3. Use lots of words in your search queries

Most any search is going to yield tens of thousands of results. If you don't believe that, just type a misspelled word into Google and see how many thousands have misspelled it the same way in their posted Web pages. So if you are going to get more responses than you can possibly review, feel free to use lots of words so that you get fewer, but hopefully better, results. I often add "Oklahoma" and perhaps a city name to queries where I am only interested in a local resource. For example, querying Google for "antiques" gave 3,090,000 results (in less than a tenth of a second.) Using "antiques Oklahoma" gave 63,300 results. But a query of "antiques Oklahoma McAlester" yielded a more manageable 233 sites with the first one having a list of the addresses and phone numbers for six antique stores in McAlester.

4. Use multiple queries

If the first ten or twenty results I receive in Google do not pinpoint the area of my interest or if there are many results, I will modify my query and try again. I will add some more words or even remove a word that produces many irrelevant hits. I may use synonyms and other related words. If you do not find what you want on the first page of results in Google, try a couple of more complex queries before you head off marching through page after page of results.

Note: The preceding is a bad plan if you are subscribed to a commercial database that charges by the query. Then you want to spend some time contemplating the most effective query in advance.

5. Use the advanced search features

This is the worst-named part of search engines. The advanced search option is actually more simple to use that the main search page in almost every site.

For example, people in Ada, Oklahoma have learned that searching for home town information often results in numerous references to sites concerned with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA.) The way to avoid that in most search sites would be to exclude from the results those Web sites containing the word "disabilities." The advanced query for that in many, but not all, search sites would be to use the minus sign in front of the word, adding "-disabilities" to your query. Many of you will not remember how to do that and in some sites there is a different method. Clicking on advanced search on the main search page takes you to a page with many options like "results without the word" where you can just type in the word "disabilities."

6. Pay attention to the domain names in results

If you are looking for information on potato peeling, and see a domain name like potatopeeling.com or peelyourpotatoes.org, you may want to go to that site even if the particular page located is not exactly what you need. You can go there and then go to the home page of the site to see what it offers.

In the antiques example above, the URL for the list of McAlester stores was http://www.antiqueinfo.com/states/oklahoma/mcalester.htm. I clicked the address bar and deleted the mcalester.htm part giving me a Web page listing of antique shop listings for 28 Oklahoma cities. The interesting thing here is that the main home page for the site, www.antiqueinfo.com, had no noticeable link to a listing of shops that was apparent to the novice. Only because I knew there had to be a link there did I finally click on "Antique Trail" to locate the list of links for all the states. I assume a true antique enthusiast would have known better.

7. When at first you don't succeed, try another search engine

No doubt Google is great, but no search engine comes close to indexing all of the Internet. So on important projects or work for clients, always try more than one of the main search engines if you do not find what you want with Google.

Meta Search Engines

Another label you will often see used is meta search engines. One of the most well-known meta search engine is www.dogpile.com. Unfortunately Dogpile has seen better days and is no longer a first tier resource.
Typically these types of search engines do not build their own indexes of Web pages but rely on submitting queries automatically to other search engines. These engines often only query a part of another index. Consequently they are very useful if a researcher is having trouble locating anything on a topic, but not as useful for comprehensive research. Some top contenders in this category include Vivisimo (http://vivisimo.com), Open Text Query Server (http://www.queryserver.com/web.htm), Surfwax (www.surfwax.com), and IXQuick (http://ixquick.com/eng).

Many of you should at least give some of these sites a look. Some of these engines have very unique graphical arrangements of the results that are attractive and different. Some will save your results for later reference.
The Meta Index for Legal Research sponsored by the Georgia State University College of Law is located at http://gsulaw.gsu.edu/metaindex. This site is not exactly a meta search engine, but can be used in that way.

The "Hidden Web"

The Hidden Web or as it is often called, the Invisible Web, is a concept with great importance for Internet researchers. Simply put, there are huge parts of the Web that are invisible to the search engines and therefore cannot be located through the search engines. Part of this is due to the fact that search engines fail to locate and index certain parts of the Web and part of this is due to the fact that search engines will not index certain things. There are many factors involved. There are certain limitations on Web indexing technology. Some Web page designers unethically repeat words seeking to improve their rankings in search engines and technology which blocks those Web sites also hides legitimate parts of the Web. As we lawyers all understand, certain parts of the Internet are gated and accessible to paying customers only.

But most of the so-called Hidden Web is, in fact, freely accessible.

For most lawyers, it is enough at this point to know that it exists and that, on a particularly narrow research topic, the absence of evidence resulting from traditional search engines is not evidence of its online absence. Professional help in this area is available, but few lawyers are utilizing it. Some law librarians and private investigators are now repositioning themselves as online information researchers. Search Google for "information broker" to see some of the many types of this emerging specialty. Lawyers with an interest in this area are directed to books like The Invisible Web: Uncovering Information Sources Search Engines Can't See by Chris Sherman and Gary Pace, CyberAge Books, 2001.

I hope reading this article will improve your search techniques and help you locate things faster online. Readers are invited to send their Internet search tips to jimc@okbar.org.

1. Jim Reese noted in the same interview experts predict that by the end of 2002, there will be approximately 500 million search queries per day if you combine all of the search engines. In 1999, the number was 100 million searches per day.
2. E.g. www.anywho.com, http://people.yahoo.com,www.switchboard.com
3. However, it is still best to go directly to www.mapquest.com to obtain those door-to-door driving directions we all seem to love.
4. Sorry, but at this time, I do not know much more about this option than I have already noted.
5. http://www.searchenginewatch.com/links/major.html For the record, these rating are subjective and include popularity as well as other factors. Some of these search engines may actually share the same index and return the same results as noted in the preceding online article.

Tip Of The Month

Make your own directory in less than 30 seconds.

Now that you have read this article about search engines and directories, it is time to learn how to create your own personalized directory. It is easy and literally anyone can do it no matter how technologically challenged you believe that you are. In Internet Explorer click on File in the upper left hand corner of the browser, then click on Import and Export, then click on Export Favorites and export your favorites to a file. It is that easy. (Be sure and save the file somewhere where you can easily find it again, like the default setting of My Documents or to the Desktop.) If you use Netscape instead of Internet Explorer, click on File, then Open Page and browse to your bookmark.htm file.

Originally published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal August 17, 2002 - Vol. 73; No.24