Turn2Us database of hardship grants

I came across Turn2Us  via the Paul Lewis Money blog (http://paullewismoney.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/hardship-grants-available.html) where there is an excellent overview of the service. Turn2Us is part of the Elizabeth Finn Care charity. As well as providing a useful benefits search tool there is a searchable database of over 3000 charities that distribute £288 million in grants to individuals in financial hardship every year. To find potential sources of grants in your location type in your postcode, gender and age. Some of the charities only provide grants for people who have worked for a particular company or in a particular industry, but there are many that offer support to the general population and can help with education costs, living costs or hardship in retirement.

When I typed in my postcode (Reading), age and gender it came up with a list of 72 charities. There were some that were bizarre in their specificity. The Edmund Godson Charity, for example, offers "one-off grants for people in need who wish to emigrate and who currently live in and around Woolwich, Shinfield near Reading, north east Herefordshire and Tenbury in Worcestershire". I was also intrigued by one that provides grants and annuities for "older women in the UK who are not 'of the artisan class'", and was left wondering whether I would qualify.

Those idiosyncrasies aside, there is a wide range of help available here from charities that are little known and not easy to find.

How to alienate and seriously annoy your users

LinkedIn is seriously annoying some of its users. Megan Roberts recently reported her experiences of the network's data insecurity on her blog LinkedIn and data insecurity (http://meganjroberts.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/linkedin-and-data-insecurity/). But it seems they've upped their game.

I had (or possibly still do have) a Personal Premium account. As I don't find the limited extra features of any use I decided to cancel my premium account about three weeks ago, well in advance of the renewal date. Having filled out the online forms I assumed that was all I had to do, but each time I logged in to my account it was still marked as a Premium account. So I went through the cancellation process again. I waited a few days but my account was still marked as premium. I went through the cancellation procedure again. My account was still labelled as Premium but when I went to try and cancel it a fourth time it was marked as already cancelled. Success? Well - no.

Today I checked my business bank account and saw that LinkedIn has debited my account for the renewal fee despite my cancellation. Perhaps I should have been alerted to potential problems when confirmation emails failed to arrive. But under my account settings the premium account was finally marked as cancelled so I assumed that was that.

I have raised a ticket with LinkedIn but I doubt I'll get any sense from them - I never have done in the past. First thing in the morning I am reporting the debit to my bank as an unauthorised transaction.

Congratulations, LinkedIn, on developing a strategy that is guaranteed to thoroughly p*** off your users.

Update: LinkedIn have now apologised for the "misunderstanding". My account has been reset to "basic" and they have refunded my money.

Top ten Google search tips from Oxford

View from the training room

 These Top Ten search tips comes from an advanced workshop I recently ran for a group in Oxford. If this is the first Top Tips that you have read on this blog, a few words of explanation as to how these are generated. These are not my own personal tips but are nominated by people who have attended my full day workshops and tried out the various commands and techniques during the practical sessions.

The participants on this particular workshop were experienced, heavy duty researchers so I was keen to see what they came up with.

1. Verbatim
This is a regular in the Top Ten lists on this blog. It is an essential tool for making Google behave and forcing it to run your search the way you want it run but is well hidden. Google automatically looks for variations on your terms and sometimes drops terms from the search. To make Google carry out your search exactly as you have typed it in, first run your search, then click on ‘Search tools’ in the menu above your results. In the second line of options that appears click on ‘All results’ and from the drop down menu select Verbatim. This is very useful when searching for an article by title and Google decides to ignore the double quote marks, which it sometimes does if it thinks you don't have enough results. If you are carrying out in-depth research it is worth using Verbatim even if your "normal" Google results seem to be OK. You may see very different content in your results list.

2. site: search and -site:
Use the site: command to focus your search on particular types of site, for example site:ac.uk for UK academic websites, or to search inside a large rambling site. If you prefer you can use the Advanced search screen at http://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search and fill in the site or domain box. You can also use -site: to exclude sites from your search.

3. filetype:
Use the filetype: command to limit your research to PowerPoint for presentations, spreadsheets for data and statistics or PDF for research papers and industry/government reports.

4. Asterisk * betweem terms
Use the asterisk between two words to stand in for 1-5 words. This is useful if you want two of your keywords close to one another but suspect that there may often be one or two words separating them. For example solar * panels will find solar photovoltaic panels, solar water heating panels etc.

5. Numeric range search
This command is unique to Google. Use it for anything to do with numbers – years, temperatures, weights, distances, prices etc. Simply type in your two numbers separated by two full stops as part of your search. For example to limit your search forecasts covering a future time period.

6. Incognito/private browsing
Even if you are not signed in to a Google account, Google personalises your results according to your search and browsing behaviour using the cookies that are stored on your computer. If you want to burst out of the filter bubble, as it is often called, use a private browser window or incognito (Chrome). Google will then ignore tracking and search cookies on your machine. To call up a private browser or incognito window use the following keys:

Chrome –  Ctrl+Shift+N
FireFox – Ctrl+Shift+P
Internet Explorer – Ctrl+Shift+P

7. Public Data explorerThe Public Data Explorer is one of Google’s best kept secrets. It can be found at http://www.google.com/publicdata/ and allows you to search open data sets from organisations such as the IMF, OECD, IM,  Eurostat and the World Bank. You can compare the data in a number of ways and there are several charting options.

8. Repeat search terms
If you are fed up with seeing the same results for a search repeat your main search term or terms. This often changes the emphasis of your search and the order in which the results appear.

9.Change order of terms
Changing the order in which you type in your search terms can change the order of your results. The pages that contain the terms in the order you specified in your search are usually given a higher weighting. This is another useful tip for when you are stuck in a search rut and are seeing the same results over and over again.

10. Different country versions
The country versions of Google give priority to the country’s local content, although it might be in the local language. This is a useful strategy when searching for research groups, companies and people that are active in a specific country. Use the standard ISO two letter country code, for example http://www.google.fr/ for Google France, http://www.google.it/ for Google Italy. It is also worth trying your search in Google.com. Your results may be more international or US focused and Google usually rolls out new search features in Google.com before launching in other country versions. If Google insists on redirecting you to your own local country version, go to the bottom right hand corner of the Google home page and you should see a link to Google.com.

Google to stop ramming Google+ down our throats?

UPDATE: Reports of the death of Google+ may have been premature. See http://www.seroundtable.com/google-sticking-around-18465.html. There are now all sorts of stories and rumours doing the rounds so we'll just have to wait and see.

Well, here's a turn up for the books. It seems that Google may no longer force us to create Google+ accounts if we want to use certain Google services such as managing videos on YouTube. The full story is at http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/report-google-to-end-forced-g-integration-drastically-cut-division-resources/. This is a major change in Google's approach to Google+ and will be welcomed by many people, including myself.

I have several Google accounts used for different purposes. I set up the first in the very early days of Google -long before even Gmail arrived on the scene - in order to manage analytics and what I then called "serious stuff" related to my business website. I subsequently used it for managing my YouTube videos. I set up a second account when Google Labs and Gmail came along and regarded that as my experimental acccount. Gradually, I used the second one more and more as my main account but kept the first for my business website applications. When Google+ came along I "upgraded" the second account and set up a profile.

Everything was fine until one day I tried to access my YouTube videos that were linked to my first, non-Google+ account. YouTube encouraged me to set up a Google+ profile for this account but I declined. YouTube responded by making my videos invisible to everyone, including myself! So I gave in and set up a second Google+ profile.

If only that had been the end of it. People started adding this new profile to their circles rather than my main one. I tried to find ways around this but in the end decided to just abandon the YouTube videos and delete the superfluous Google+ profile. It is easily done via your Google+ settings page but of course there are numerous dire warnings of all the wonderful things that you will no longer be able to enjoy (not a lot actually!). Despite what has been implied in the past deleting or what Google calls "downgrading" your Google+ account does NOT delete your ordinary Google account.

Do read the ars technica article mentioned above and also Google+ Is Walking Dead | TechCrunch. Both make an interesting read.

Google Top 10 Search Tips

These are the top 10 tips from the participants of a recent workshop on Google, organised by UKeiG and held on 9th April 2014. The edited slides from the day can be found on authorSTREAM at http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-2121264-making-google-behave-techniques-better-results/ and on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/making-google-behave-techniques-for-better-results

1. site: 
Use the site: command to focus your search on particular types of site, for example site:nhs.uk for UK NHS websites, or to search inside a large rambling site. If you prefer you can use the Advanced search screen at http://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search and fill in the site or domain box

2. Verbatim
An essential tool for making Google behave and run your search the way you want it run. Google automatically looks for variations on your terms and sometimes drops terms from the search. To make Google run your search exactly as you have typed it in, first run your search. Then click on ‘Search tools’ in the menu above your results. In the second line of options that appears click on ‘All results’ and from the drop down menu select Verbatim.

3. intext:
Google’s automatic synonym search can be helpful in looking for alternative terms but if you want a term to be included in your search exactly as you have typed it in then prefix the word with intext:. For example heron island intext:parrots caversham UK.

4. Incognito/Private browsing
Even if you are not signed in to a Google account, Google personalises your results according to your search and browsing behaviour. If you want to burst out of the filter bubble, as it is often called, use a private browser window or incognito (Chrome). Google will then ignore tracking and search cookies on your machine. To call up a private browser or incognito window use the following keys:

Chrome –  Ctrl+Shift+N
FireFox – Ctrl+Shift+P
Internet Explorer – Ctrl+Shift+P

5. Reading level
This changes the emphasis of the results that you see. Run your search and from the menu above the results select ‘Search tools’, then ‘All results’, and from the drop menu ‘Reading level’. Options for switching between basic, intermediate and advanced reading levels should then appear just above the results. Click on the Advanced option to see results biased towards research.

6. Date
To limit your search by date, for example the last month or year, first run your search. Then click on ‘Search tools’ in the menu above the results and from the second row of options that appears click on ‘Any time’. Select your time period or a custom range from the drop down menu. Unfortunately, this does not work with Verbatim. You could use the 'daterange:' command instead to specify your dates and then apply Verbatim, but you first have to convert you dates to Julian format. The Julian Date Converter at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.php tells you more about the format and provides a tool for converting dates. Alternatively, using something like Gmacker (http://gmacker.com/web/content/gDateRange/gdr.htm). This enables you to enter your search terms and select your dates from a calendar. It then runs your search and on the Google results page you can apply Verbatim in the usual way.

7. CachedThe cached option enables you to view the copy of the page that Google has in its database. This is useful when the current version of a page seems to differ signicantly from the one described in the Google search results. Click on the little green arrow next to the URL of the page on the results list and then select Cached.

8. filetype:
Use the filetype: command to limit your research to PowerPoint for presentations, spreadsheets for data and statistics or PDF for research papers and industry/government reports. One workshop participant found it to be a great way to track down conference poster presentations by combining PDF and PowerPoint filetypes with keywords and the term 'poster'.

9. Country versions of Google
The country versions of Google give priority to the country’s local content, although it might be in the local language. This is a useful strategy when searching  for industries, companies and people that are active in a particular country. Use the standard ISO two letter country code, for example http://www.google.fr/ for Google France, http://www.google.it/ for Google Italy.

10. Books - About this magazine
Several people were interested in Google Books and in the magazine archives in particular. Google does not, though, make it easy to browse a magazine's archives. Once you have identified a series that is of interest it would seem logical to click on "Browse all issues" to view a list of what is available.

However, it seems to list the years of the issues randomly. Selecting "About this magazine" brings up some brief information about the title and links that enable you to browse past issues by year.

Anything but Google - Top Tips

This collection of Top Tips is a combined list nominated by those who attended the autumn and spring UKeiG workshops on "Anything but Google". The participants came from all sectors and types of company, and included a couple of self employed researchers. The sessions covered both general search tools and specialist services, and the list is an interesting mix of strategies and specific sites.  A big "Thank- you" to everyone who participated in the workshops.

1. Get to know the advanced search commands and options.
Google is not the only search tool that uses them and they can help focus your search, especially when using general search tools such as Bing.

2. If you are conducting serious research don't stop with the first reasonable looking results.
Information of dubious quality can infiltrate even the most well respected of specialist websites. Put on your "skeptical goggles" as one delegate said! There are plenty of alternative tools and resources out there so get some corroboration from additional sources before acting on the information you find.

3. Allocate time for your search.
If you are carrying out in-depth research don't leave it to the last minute. You will probably need to tweak your strategy and try different search tools to ensure that you are retrieving the best information. It can sometimes take longer than you anticipate.

4. Plan your strategy.
Think about the type of search you want to conduct and the type of information you are looking for. For example if you are carrying out a systematic review and want to use Boolean operators forget about Google; head for Bing instead. And if you need official statistics or company information go straight to specialist sites that provide that data.

5. Don't stick with what you regularly use.
Experiment with other resources, especially if you suspect your default search tool is not telling you the whole story.

6. Country versions of search tools.
Many search tools offer country versions that give priority to the country’s local content, although that might be in the local language. This is a useful strategy when searching for industries, companies and people that are active in a particular country.

7. Learn when to try something else.
If a site's navigation or internal search engine seems to be returning rubbish don't struggle with it. Try another route to get to the information. Either try an alternative source of information or use the 'site:' command - available in Bing as well as Google - to search inside the site.

8. DuckDuckGo http://www.duckduckgo.com/.
This was recommended for its clean, straightforward layout and the range of resources it offers on a topic. A school librarian commented that the pupils at her school loved it.

9. MillionShort  http://millionshort.com/.
If you are fed up with seeing the same results from Google again and again give MillionShort a try. MillionShort enables you to remove the most popular web sites from the results. Originally, as its name suggests, it removed the top 1 million but you can change the number that you want omitted. The page that best answers your question might not be well optimised for search engines or might cover a topic that is so “niche” that it never makes it into the top results in Google or Bing.

10. Carrot Search http://carrotsearch.com/

This was recommended for its clustering of results and also the visualisations of terms and concepts via the circles and "foam tree". There is a link to the live web demo on the left hand side of the home page.

11. Microsoft academic Search  - charts http://academic.research.microsoft.com/
This is a direct competitor to Google Scholar. The site can be slow to load and it sometimes assigns authors to the wrong institution. Nevertheless, the visualisations such as the co-author and citation maps can be useful in identifying who else is working in a particular area of research. The visualisations can be accessed by clicking on the Citation Graph image to the left of the search results or an author profile.

12. Creative Commons and public domain images.
Use the Bing license option (US version only) to search for images with creative commons or public domain licenses, but do go to the original webpage and check that the license is indeed associated with the image you want to use. Alternatively use one of the following:

Flickr  Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons
Flickr The Commons http://www.flickr.com/commons/
Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/
MorgueFile.com  http://www.morguefile.com/
Geograph http://www.geograph.org.uk/
Nasa http://www.nasa.gov/

13. Tineye Multicolr http://labs.tineye.com/multicolr/.
"Search 10 million Creative commons Flickr images by colour."  You can specify more than one colour and move the the dividing bar between two colours to increase/decrease their prominence within the image. Click through to the original Flickr image to double check the license.

14. Company Check http://www.companycheck.co.uk/
Company Check repackages Companies House data and provides 5 years of accounts, and graphs for some financials free of charge. It also lists the directors of a company. Click on a director’s name and you can view other current and past directorships for that person. It provides more free information than Companies House but you have to register (free) to gain full access. Additional information such as credit risk, CCJs, credit reports, and many Companies House documents are priced or available as part of a subscription.

15. Guardian Data Store http://www.guardian.co.uk/data/
For datasets and visualisations relating to stories currently in the news. As well as the graphs and interactive maps the source of the data is always given and there are links to the original datasets that are used in the articles.

16. Zanran http://zanran.com/
This is a search tool for searching information contained in charts, graphs and tables of data and within formatted documents such as PDFs, Excel spreadsheets and images. Enter your search terms and optionally limit your search by date and/or format type. One delegate said "It has changed my life!". (We think/hope she meant her working life.)

17. Keep up to date.
Keep up to date with what the search engines are up to, changes to key resources and new sites. Identify blogs and commentators that are relevant to your research interests and subject areas, and follow them using RSS or email alerts.

Getty Images is NOT making all of its photos freely available

My Twitter feed and other social media this morning is full of posts and updates saying that Getty Images is making all of its images freely available. It is not. Read the "Embedded Viewer" section of its Terms and Conditions at http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/Corporate/Terms.aspx for what you can and cannot do.

They are making a limited selection of images available for "editorial purposes (meaning relating to events that are newsworthy or of public interest)."

"Embedded Getty Images Content may not be used: (a) for any commercial purpose (for example, in advertising, promotions or merchandising) or to suggest endorsement or sponsorship".

Getty also reserve the right "to place advertisements in the Embedded Viewer or otherwise monetise its use without any compensation to you."

Ignore these T&Cs at your financial peril!

As for the image associated with this article, it is not from Getty but one of my own. It is a decommissioned composting toilet at Barracks Lane Community Garden, Oxford. Please feel free to use as you wish.

Is Bing dropping search terms?

Google has been automatically dropping terms from searches that give few or no results for some time. It now looks as though Bing may be doing the same. Unfortunately I cannot give the details of the search that brought this to light as it was confidential research. In general, though, what we were searching for were announcements or news articles about two companies involved in a particular project. We hadn't found anything in Google so we tried various alternative search engines including Bing (http://www.bing.com/). The results seemed quite promising until we started looking at the individual pages. None of them had all of our terms. It is possible that the missing terms appeared in links to the pages but the content of the documents suggested that this was unlikely, and there is no reliable free tool that shows you who is linking to a specific page. So it looks as though Bing is now dropping terms in the same way that Google does.

There are two ways to stop Bing doing this. The first is to use the Boolean AND operator between all of your terms. The second is to prefix the term that must be present in a document with 'inbody:', for example inbody:aardvark.

Did we find anything that answered our question? No, but sometimes I don't expect to and it is frustrating when the search engine thinks it knows best and unilaterally decides to rewrite the search strategy.

For a list of all of the Bing advanced search commands go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff795620.aspx

Google makes ads more obvious

This is a feature which I have been seeing on and off for a few months so I'm not sure if it is one of their experiments or if it is being rolled out gradually. It's very simple: advertisements that appear at the top of your results lists and in the panel to the right are marked with a little yellow box with 'Ad' written inside.

Over the years it has become harder to identify ads at the top of results as the pale pastel backgrounds to them became more subtle. It has been suggested that the more obvious marker is a consequence of discussions between Google and various regulatory authorities.

Business information key resources

On one of my recent workshops I was asked if I used Google as my default search tool, especially when conducting business research. The short answer is "It depends". The long answer is that it depends on the topic and type of information I am looking for. Yes, I do use Google a lot but if I need to make sure that I have covered as many sources as possible I also use Google alternatives such as Bing, Millionshort, Blekko etc. On the other hand and depending on the type of information I require I may ignore Google and its ilk altogether and go straight to one or more of the specialist websites and databases.

Here are just a few of the free and pay-per-view resources that I use.

Information on industry sectors

My favourite collection of guides on industry sectors is The British Library Business Information and IP Centre’s industry guides. These highlight relevant industry directories, databases, publications and web sites and are excellent starting points if you are new to a sector

Statistics

There are at least a dozen statistics sites that I use on a regular basis but if I'm unsure of where to look or want to make sure I haven't missed anything I use OFFSTATS – Official Statistics on the Web at  http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz. A great starting point for official statistical sources by country, region subject or a combination of categories. All of the content in the database is in the public domain and available through the Internet and has been quality assessed by staff at The University of Auckland Library.

Official company information

If I want to confirm the existence of a company or obtain filings and accounts I usually go direct to the relevant official company registry. I have a list of the registries that can be searched online at http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/registers.htm. As many of my enquiries are for UK companies I am a frequent visitor to Companies House at http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/. Some information is free but filings and accounts are priced. There are several companies that repackage Companies House data and sometimes make extra data or analysis free of charge for example Company Check at http://www.companycheck.co.uk/, which enables you to search by company or director's name. Risk reports, information on CCJs, and some official filings are priced if you do not have a subscription to the full service.

Share price information

For free share price information I use Yahoo Finance (http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/) and Google Finance (https://www.google.co.uk/finance). Both of these services provide charts and news on shares on the major stock markets. Google's graphs are ‘annotated’ with labels that link to news articles listed to the right of the graph, so you can see whether or not a particular event or announcement has affected a share price. Both offer free, daily historical share prices in figures. As well viewing historical graphs for share prices you can download the data as a spreadsheet.

News alerts

For news alerts I use a mixture of bookmarked searches, Google email and RSS alerts, and RSS feeds from a wide range of blogs and news sites. I find that Google alerts are erratic and unreliable but they do sometimes pick up something unique so I still include them in the mix. RSS feeds are my main source of current awareness and when a news feed is rather broad in coverage I use my RSS reader's search function to identify the articles that are of interest  to me. I use a desktop reader call RSSOwl (http://www.rssowl.org/) but Inoreader (http://inoreader.com/) is a web based service that offers similar features and options.

Who is behind a site?

If I am to use any information from the web for business purposes I need to know who is behind the website. DomainTools http://www.domaintools.com/ is one of many services that will tell who owns a domain name, unless they are hiding behind an agent or privacy protection service. There is also a Whois+ extension for Chrome (my default browser) that can be used to run a quick and easy check on the domain name of a displayed page.

Google shows missing search terms

Several weeks ago I noticed that Google was displaying the terms it had dropped from your search as 'Missing'. Google started routinely ignoring selected search terms towards the end of 2011 (see http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/08/dear-google-stop-messing-with-my-search/). Google's response to the outcry from searchers was to introduce the Verbatim search option. However, there was no way of checking whether all of your terms appeared in a result other than viewing the whole page. Irritating, to say the least, if you found that the top 10 results did not include all of your keywords.

Fast forward to December 2013, and some people started seeing results lists that showed missing keywords as strikethroughs. I saw them for a few days and then, just as I was preparing a blog posting on the feature, they disappeared! I assumed that they were one of Google's live experiments never to be seen again but it seems they are back. Two people contacted me today to say that they are seeing strikethroughs on missing terms. I ran my test searches again and, yes, I'm seeing them as well.

I ran the original search that prompted my November 2011 article (parrots heron island Caversham UK) and included -site:rba.co.uk in the strategy to exclude my original blog postings. Sure enough, the first two results were missing parrots and had "Missing parrots" underneath their entry in the list.

Remember, though, that Google automatically looks for variations on your search terms. Your original keyword may not be present in the results but a synonym may be, for example birds instead of parrots. I did find one entry in the top 10 results that seemed out of place. It was an article in the local newspaper. There was no 'Missing....' underneath the result but I could not find synonyms of parrots anywhere in the story. The closest was the surname of a person mentioned in the article - Parry - and I can only assume that this was Google truncating my 'parrots' keyword and looking for variations. But Parry was not highlighted in the entry in the results list as synonyms are. I shall look at the article in more detail to check that I have not missed a lurking parakeet or cockatoo!

I need to carry out more test searches to see how reliable this new feature is but, nevertheless, it is a welcome and useful addition to Google. If your top 10 results are showing strikethroughs then you know you have to either prefix the missing term with 'intext:' or use Verbatim for the whole search.