tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53798743387008108472024-03-19T04:42:45.890+00:00Karen Blakeman's BlogNews and comments on developments in search and electronic resources. Once posted, the articles are not updated. Older postings may contain links that are out of date or no longer work.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger614125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-37692061541203181932019-12-01T10:20:00.000+00:002019-12-01T10:20:29.479+00:00Oh, how easy it is to get things wrong<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Many people living in London and south-east London were woken up in the early hours of the morning today by an "explosion". It turned out to be a sonic boom caused by two RAF Typhoons flying supersonic to intercept a plane that had lost communications with Air Traffic Control. <br />
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Several news services carried the story including the Guardian, which included this image in the first version of the article: <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVVULM7-ypLuQi3tBxYH5E3mcpHYJKn3NR7qZcAYQdncXNiO6vM96QeSO8lYiKQREpzBKkWiPmGaemwS4CE2yDE9lMyDQkR8_4c-rZmI16cA-YaWxxzEVEo-0WohiNZvx0UnTWOIVFf0/s1600/Image_Sonic_Boom_Fighter_Plane_1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="572" data-original-width="635" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOVVULM7-ypLuQi3tBxYH5E3mcpHYJKn3NR7qZcAYQdncXNiO6vM96QeSO8lYiKQREpzBKkWiPmGaemwS4CE2yDE9lMyDQkR8_4c-rZmI16cA-YaWxxzEVEo-0WohiNZvx0UnTWOIVFf0/s400/Image_Sonic_Boom_Fighter_Plane_1.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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It wasn't long before numerous people on Twitter pointed out that the plane shown in the picture is not an RAF Typhoon but a Russian aircraft. The caption on the photo gave credit to the Royal Air Force/AP. Surely the Royal Air Force cannot have got it wrong? I ran an image search for Typhoon fighter planes to compare with the Guardian image and it most definitely is not a Typhoon.<br />
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I then ran a reverse image search on the photo in Tineye and found that it had first appeared in news articles in June earlier this year (2019).<br />
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An article from Business Insider had the same image but with the caption: "A Royal Air Force Typhoon from No. 11 Squadron, based out of Ämari Air Base in Estonia as part of 121 Expeditionary Air Wing intercepts a Russian Su-27, June 25, 2019. Royal Air Force". </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcCtLmZqTHiSkJnzrFTQnJBGTNNrqmIqP3mC5XWwTyE7IRNsdONqf1sJ7P_q29BhEA9Q2YuCwojbUWOmObNDJsV4WY5qljKb1KW4vwob_Wc2LJlGbsxeFLs3dBByzzpmUysMrJpYXsUwA/s1600/Image_Sonic_Boom_Fighter_Plane_3.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="481" data-original-width="644" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcCtLmZqTHiSkJnzrFTQnJBGTNNrqmIqP3mC5XWwTyE7IRNsdONqf1sJ7P_q29BhEA9Q2YuCwojbUWOmObNDJsV4WY5qljKb1KW4vwob_Wc2LJlGbsxeFLs3dBByzzpmUysMrJpYXsUwA/s400/Image_Sonic_Boom_Fighter_Plane_3.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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Another image search, this time on SU-2, seemed to confirm its identity and by now there were several tweets on Twitter from those who know about such things pointing out The Guardian's error.<br />
I suspect that someone at the Guardian had run a search on the photos that they were allowed to use and that search picked up the word Typhoon in the description of the image. In their haste to publish the article they didn't double check what was actually depicted in the photo. An easy mistake to make if you are in a hurry and don't know that much about fighter planes.<br />
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The error has now been corrected:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPLOPLbgZMNwZxodLeIKEvnbJ7EH7E3gA1hP6am6wrZWQEI1ztCxoD5hADMl0Nh9whVTG4QMd1UA5zPJZasPXKF9U6mKUvuE-lnVNYe6F_pzWEVeZanJC7e36sU5cU5ffX6KXTI_TOLDw/s1600/Image_Sonic_Boom_Fighter_Plane_4.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="573" data-original-width="632" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPLOPLbgZMNwZxodLeIKEvnbJ7EH7E3gA1hP6am6wrZWQEI1ztCxoD5hADMl0Nh9whVTG4QMd1UA5zPJZasPXKF9U6mKUvuE-lnVNYe6F_pzWEVeZanJC7e36sU5cU5ffX6KXTI_TOLDw/s400/Image_Sonic_Boom_Fighter_Plane_4.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-63473123936118532202018-08-28T17:33:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:34:02.016+00:00Google offers to include missing search terms - sometimesGoogle has been omitting terms from searches for several years. For me, the matter came to a head wayback in November 2011 (see <a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2011/11/08/dear-google-stop-messing-with-my-search/">Dear Google, stop messing with my search</a>). Many of has had noticed it happening for a while but what suddenly made it more frustrating was that one could no longer prefix a term with a plus sign to force its inclusion in a search. Furthermore, surrounding terms and phrases with double quote marks did not always work either.<br/><br/>Google's Dan Russell explained why in a comment to my blog posting:<br/><blockquote>"When you do a multi-term query on Google (even with quoted terms), the algorithm sometimes backs-off from hard ANDing all of the terms together. It’s a kind of “soft” backoff. Why? Because it’s clear that people will often write long queries (with anywhere from 5 to 10 terms) for which there are no results. Google will then selectively remove the terms that are the lowest frequency to give you some results (rather than none). Bear in mind that 99% of searchers have no idea why they’d want to hard AND, and just get frustrated when they get no results. The soft AND is a way to reduce the overall frustration and give the searcher something to examine (and with luck, a chance to reformulate their query)."</blockquote><br/>He added:<br/><blockquote>"But I see what you mean about wanting to know if there are NO hits to a given query. I’ll pass this information along to the Google design team and see if we can’t do something with this."</blockquote><br/>Well, Google <strong>did</strong> do something about it and some weeks later Verbatim, which could be applied to your entire search and make Google run it without omissions or variations, was added as a tool. The other option that existed then, and still does, is to prefix individual terms or phrases with 'intext:'.<br/><br/>If you did not use Verbatim you were still left guessing as to whether or not all of your terms or their synonyms were present in a particular document until you actually clicked on it and viewed it in its entirety. About a couple of years ago, Google started to include information on omitted terms in the results snippets by adding a "Missing: " statement underneath the entry. At least we now had something to work with. Google has now added a search option to it. It started to appear 2-3 months ago, disappeared for a while, but now seems to be a permanent feature. It enables you to tell Google that it <strong>must</strong> include the missing term. Let's works through the example that first alerted me to it: a search for broad beans called Eleonora and supplied by Tamar Organics.<br/><br/>Before you ask, the reason I did not go directly to the Tamar Organics website was because it was quicker to go via Google than to work through the seed supplier's site search and navigation system. Also, please note that if you try this search out yourselves you will probably get very different results. When we tried this in a workshop of 20 people we ended up with 11 variations on the theme!<br/><br/>First, the quick and simple approach of just throwing in a few terms:<br/><br/>broad beans eleonora tamar organics<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-1.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3899 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-1.gif" alt="" width="450" height="395" /></a><br/><br/>The first two results were relevant and exactly what I was looking for, but 8 results seemed a bit low especially as Google had indicated on the next two in the list that the term "eleonora" was missing. (We'll come back to the "Must include: " in a moment.) Going to the bottom of the results page there was the usual message that similar entries had not been displayed.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-2.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3898 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-2.gif" alt="" width="450" height="63" /></a><br/><br/>Erm... but, Google, you displayed 8 not 15 as you claim. Let's play along, anyway, and repeat the search by clicking on the link Google gives us. This time I was given 11 results. We know that Google often gets the count wrong when using the repeat search option but I still thought that the number of results was rather low if it was omitting terms. What would happen if I decided to take Google up on its offer of "Must include: eleonora"? Two, three or perhaps just four results? I clicked on the eleonora link and .... 20,700 results!<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-3.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3897 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-3.gif" alt="" width="450" height="419" /></a><br/><br/>In the search bar above the results we can see that Google has put eleonora in double quote marks to force its inclusion.<br/><br/>The first three results were fine but when I looked in detail at the fourth document it was missing both tamar and organics, and there was no indication in the snippets provided by Google that these, or any other terms, had been omitted.<br/><br/>Going back to my first set of results and looking further down the list I saw that, as well as one from which eleonara was omitted, there was another that had left out both eleonora and tamar, and a third with just tamar missing.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-4.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3900 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-4.gif" alt="" width="450" height="260" /></a><br/><br/>If the "Must include:" option has more than one term, you can only choose one of them. You cannot have all of them. Choosing tamar gave me 43,500 results but this time Google did tell me when eleonora was missing from the documents. Most of the results were totally irrelevant.<br/><br/>How would I normally deal with missing terms? I generally start off with a quick and dirty search and, unless I am looking for a particular type of document such as a presentation or industry report, I don't always use advanced commands. I just type in the separate words and in this case I did get what I wanted at the top of the page. But what if I hadn't?<br/><br/>I was interested in the variety of broad beans called Eleonora but Google was omitting it from some of the results. I could have done what Google did and use quote marks around eleonora but my experience is that Google sometimes ignores those if the number of results is low. My usual strategy is to use 'intext:' before the missing word, for example:<br/><br/>broad beans intext:eleonora tamar organics<br/><br/>This gave me 18,400 results with, again, most of them missing one or more terms.<br/><br/>Deciding to trust Google<strong> not</strong> to ignore double quote marks I changed my search to:<br/><br/>"broad beans" "eleonora" "tamar organics"<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-5.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3901 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Google_Missing_Terms_20180701-5.gif" alt="" width="450" height="374" /></a><br/><br/>This time it was just 3 results, and when I repeated the search to include the omitted results I saw 5 but nothing from the Tamar Organics website itself. The reason for this was the presence of the phrase "broad beans" in the search string. Looking at the results in my very first search, I saw that Google was picking up the phrases "broad bean" and "beans (broad)" so I was now missing out on the top and most relevant results. A reminder that one needs to think very carefully about how and in what order search terms may appear in documents before applying phrase searching.<br/><br/>For comparison I applied Verbatim to the original quick and dirty search and got 411 results. The main problem with that set was that Tamar and Organics were appearing in the documents separated by several words or even sentences. When I applied Verbatim to the search string:<br/><br/>broad beans eleonora "Tamar Organics"<br/><br/>I was presented with a respectable list of 18 relevant results.<br/><br/>So, is the "Must include:" option worth using? It is quick and easy to apply, especially on a mobile device and I suspect that is why it has been introduced. However, it all starts to get very messy and complicated if you try to use it on subsequent sets of results. When I'm searching on my laptop, or on a desktop, I sometimes try the link but if that set of results is disappointing and Google drops a different selection of terms I go back to my practice of using intext and/or Verbatim. I also try double quotes around terms and phrases but my experience is that that Google still occasionally ignores them. It is entirely up to you which approach you use. How well each works does vary from one search to another, and on whether or not you are allowing Google to adjust results according to your search history and behaviour. The important thing is to be aware of the options available to you and to be willing to experiment.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-33200976956934570162018-06-01T15:54:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:34:01.807+00:00Presentation: free search tools for research informationEdited highlights from my recent workshop on search tools for research information are now available. Please note that not all of the services, search tools, examples or issues covered in the workshop are included in this version.<br/><br/>Slides can be viewed on <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/advanced-searching-free-search-tools-for-research-information">Slideshare</a> or <a href="http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-3463736-advanced-searching-free-tools-research-information/">authorSTREAM. </a><br/><br/><a href="https://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/advanced-searching-free-search-tools-for-research-information"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3891" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Bodliean_research_info_Title_Slide_Blog.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="344" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-20350136052389072622018-05-26T11:00:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:34:01.603+00:00Somebody, please put Google News out of its miseryI didn't think Google News (<a href="http://news.google.co.uk/">http://news.google.co.uk/</a>) could get any worse but I was wrong. The previous revamp was bad enough: no more advanced search, useless and irrelevant personalisation options, and don’t even think about trying to set up sensible alerts. Alerts were never that good at the best of times but were not improved one iota by the changes. And then they altered the structure of the RSS feed URLs so that, supposedly, your existing feeds no longer worked. I don't know why, but my old feeds are still delivering news and contain better quality information than the new ones I set up. <a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Google_News_201805_1.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3886 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Google_News_201805_1.gif" alt="Google News " width="450" height="356" /></a><br/><br/>In the latest incarnation, Google News has lost most of my topics, the "For You" is total rubbish as is "Local", you can no longer manage and personalise the topics (although that didn't really work anyway), and the RSS feed buttons have gone. I can only assume that this is all down to the real time AI/ML that Google recently announced was going to be used to organize the news. (<a href="https://blog.google/products/news/new-google-news-ai-meets-human-intelligence/">The new Google News: AI meets human intelligence</a> ).<br/><br/>Existing RSS feeds still work, though and you can create email alerts for a news search if you run it from within the general Google results page. Run your search in "All" and then click on the News link. There is a Create Alert button at the bottom of your results, but one wonders how long that will last.<br/><br/>Someone should put Google News out of its misery, close it down and leave news searchable via the link on the main page.<br/><br/>And they may as well ditch Google Finance as well. That is a shadow of its former self : no more portfolios for monitoring stocks, no more historical data for viewing and download, no more news annotations on the price charts, and the comparison option only works for two stocks at a time. If you are interested in monitoring the stock markets or researching individual companies for free get thee hence to Yahoo! Finance (<a href="https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/">https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/</a>). There was some doubt over the future of Yahoo! Finance when Yahoo! was acquired by Verizon and became part of Oath but, charting oddities aside, there does seem to be some development going on. The new “Sustainability” tab for example shows environment, social and governance (ESG) ratings from Sustainalytics (<a href="https://www.sustainalytics.com/">https://www.sustainalytics.com/</a>). There was positive feedback on it from some business librarians who attended one of my recent workshops.<br/><br/>So many of Google's services are going from bad to worse to totally pointless and unusable. No wonder, then, that people are starting to look seriously at alternative resources.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-77875829242943396222018-04-23T11:42:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:34:01.296+00:00SmugMug buys Flickr - should we stay or should we go?<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Flickr.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3881 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Flickr.jpg" alt="Flickr Photostream" width="450" height="300" /></a><br/><br/>So the wait is over. When it was announced that Verizon was to buy Yahoo! there was concern as to what was going to happen to Flickr. Yahoo! never did much in terms of developing Flickr and what it did do was rubbish. Trying to add the location of your photo is an interesting experience at the best of times. You might be able to pin it onto the map but the name of the place is all too often wrong. I used to spend half my time on Flickr manually changing the location - not something to be taken on lightly - but I generally don't bother now. It's not worth the effort.<br/><br/>Then there are the auto generated tags that Flickr adds to your photos without asking for confirmation. (<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2016/03/11/flickr-pulls-out-all-the-stops-with-automatic-tagging/">Flickr pulls out all the stops with automatic tagging)</a>. These are sometimes relevant and it is helpful to be reminded of tags that might prove useful when searching, but the error rate is far too high to leave Flickr to its own devices when generating these. Deleting the oddballs after you have uploaded individual photos is not too onerous but checking a back catalogue of thousands of photos for rogue tags is not really feasible. It explains why Flickr search results often include photos that no way match your search terms.<br/><br/>It would also be nice if we could have interfaces with social media and mobile apps that actually work.<br/><br/>And finally, many of us are looking forward to not having to use a Yahoo! account to log in.<br/><br/>Unfortunately, the email that is hitting subscribers inboxes right now states:<br/><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><b>"Nothing will change immediately with regard to your Flickr account.</b> You will still access Flickr with your current login credentials and you will have the same Flickr experience as you do now."</p><br/>They do, though, go on to say:<br/><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"We will continue to work to make your Flickr experience even better."</p><br/>Hmm. We shall just have to see if that is going to work out. In the meantime we have until May 25th, 2018 to decide if we want our Flickr account and data transferred to SmugMug. If we don't:<br/><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"you must go to your Flickr account to download the photos and videos you want to keep, then delete your account from your Account Settings by May 25, 2018. If you do not delete your account by May 25, 2018, your Flickr account and data will transfer to SmugMug and will be governed by SmugMug’s Terms and Privacy Policy".</p><br/>So there we have it. I shall stay with Flickr/SmugMug for the time being and see how things develop. In any case, I shall be backing up my Flickr photos as usual just in case something goes seriously awry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-78689171561962406872018-01-30T14:45:00.000+00:002019-12-01T09:34:00.893+00:00Brexit - sources of information<strong>Please note</strong>: a regularly updated version of this posting is now on the main website at <a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/brexit.htm">http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/brexit.htm </a><br/><br/>Those of us living and working in the UK are constantly bombarded with news and information of varying quality on Brexit. I regularly run workshops on sources of business information and, inevitably, these now include a section on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, commonly referred to as Brexit. One of the exercises I give those attending the workshop is to draw up their own individual list of resources that they are likely to use for keeping up to date, or as starting points for researching the topic. We then produce a combined list for the whole group. I have listed below a selection of those resources, concentrating on the more general sources rather than industry specific sites that were mentioned in some of the sessions. It is by no means a comprehensive list and this blog posting will not be updated, but I have created a separate web page <a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/brexit.htm">Brexit - UK withdrawal from the EU</a>, which will be added to and amended periodically.<br/><h2><strong>EU referendum results</strong></h2><br/><a href="http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/electorate-and-count-information">Electoral Commission EU referendum results</a><br/>The Electoral Commission is the independent body that oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK. This page shows the voting totals and results by region and by area within that region. You can download the results data in full as a CSV file. There are also links to <a href="https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/eu-referendum-result-visualisations">results visualisations</a>, information on <a href="https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/grants-to-designated-lead-campaigners">grants to designated lead campaigners</a>, the Electoral Commissions <a href="https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/eu-referendum-question-assessment">assessment of the EU referendum question</a> and their recommended amendment, and the <a href="https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information-by-subject/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/voting-guides">voting guides</a>.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum/results">EU Referendum Results - BBC News</a><br/>The BBC referendum results page and linked pages presents the same information as the Electoral Commission but in a slightly different way. There are links to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/eu_referendum">BBC news stories and videos</a> on and around the date of the referendum.<br/><br/><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum,_2016">Results of the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016 - Wikipedia </a><br/>Another page showing the voting results in a variety of ways but in addition this one has links at the end to external sources reporting on the run up to the referendum and local press articles some of which show a breakdown of the results by ward.<br/><h2>News</h2><br/><a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/eu-referendum/">Brexit: research and analysis - UK Parliament</a><br/>"Research and analysis from Parliament's libraries and committees on how leaving the EU will affect different policy areas in the UK".<br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/sources/papers@parliament.uk">Brexit email alerts</a> on updates and new content are available.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32810887">Brexit: All you need to know about the UK leaving the EU - BBC News</a><br/>Background information on the what has happened so far, what is happening now, what has been agreed and what needs to be agreed. There is also a long list of FAQs (frequently asked questions), many of which cannot be answered yet but some possibilities are discussed.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/series/eu-referendum-morning-briefing">The Guardian - Weekly Brexit Briefing</a><br/>A very useful summary and update from The Guardian newspaper on what has been happening over the past week. You can sign up to receive the briefing by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/31/eu-referendum-morning-briefing-sign-up">weekly email</a> and there is also a weekly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/series/brexit-means">Brexit Means podcast</a>.<br/><br/><strong>General News Search</strong><br/><br/>If you are interested in seeing articles that represent a wider range of viewpoints and opinions, run a search on Brexit in <a href="https://news.google.com/news/">Google News</a> and <a href="https://www.bing.com/news/">Bing News</a>. As well as the national and regional UK papers, these will also pick up stories appearing in the press in other countries.<br/><h2>Legislation</h2><br/><a href="http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/europeanunionwithdrawal.html">European Union (Withdrawal) Bill 2017-19 - UK Parliament</a><br/>Use this page to monitor the progress of the Bill through Parliament and see related documents such as:<br/><ul><br/> <li>Full text of the Bill as introduced and further versions of the Bill as it is reprinted to incorporate amendments (proposals for change) made during its passage through Parliament.</li><br/> <li>Tracked changes versions of the Bill</li><br/> <li>Explanatory Notes</li><br/> <li>Full list of amendment papers relating to the Bill.</li><br/> <li>Public Bill Committee and report stage proceedings</li><br/> <li>House of Commons Library and House of Lords Library briefing papers</li><br/> <li>Will write letters (Questions put to government Ministers during debates on Bills may be answered by the Minister saying 'I will write to the Hon Member'. “Will write” replies are not published in Hansard but are placed in the Library of the House concerned and published on the Parliamentary website.)</li><br/></ul><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Brexit_Bill_201801_1.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3864 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Brexit_Bill_201801_1.gif" alt="" width="450" height="381" /></a><br/><br/>Alerts on changes to the page, stage reached by the Bill, and new documents are available by <a href="https://subscriptions.parliament.uk/service/subscribe.html?code=UKParliament_Bill_2045">email</a> and <a href="https://services.parliament.uk/bills/RSS/europeanunionwithdrawal.xml">RSS</a>.<br/><br/><a href="http://ukconstitutionallaw.org/blog/">Blog | UK Constitutional Law Association</a><br/>Affiliated to the International Association of Constitutional Law. The UKCLA blog provides analysis and comment on matters of constitutional law in the UK. Not suprisingly, many of the current blog postings cover some aspect of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.<br/><br/><a href="http://jackofkent.com/">Jack of Kent blog</a><br/>"News and comment on law and policy, from a liberal and critical perspective". Written by David Allen Green who is a <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/david-allen-green/">legal commentator at FT.com</a> and a former <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/david_allen_green">legal correspondent of the New Statesman</a>. Currently posting mainly about Brexit.<br/><br/><a href="http://publiclawforeveryone.com/">Public Law for Everyone – Professor Mark Elliott</a><br/>Another source of comment and analysis on the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. Written by Mark Elliott, Professor of Public Law at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and Legal Adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. The views expressed on this blog are in a purely personal capacity.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-22946365094070703242017-10-29T10:16:00.000+00:002019-12-01T09:34:00.467+00:00Google makes it harder to change location for country specific researchGoogle has made a major change to search and it does not bode well. Results are now based on your current location. So what's new? Google has always looked at your location, even down to city/town level, and changed the results accordingly. That is fine if you are travelling and want to find the nearest Thai restaurant via your mobile, for example. Presenting a list of eateries in my home town of Reading is no good to me if I'm away in Manchester and getting very hungry!<br/><br/>The problems start if you are researching a person, company or industry based in a country other than your own - let's use Norway as an example - or just want the latest news from that country. The trick used to be to go to the relevant country version of Google, in this case www.google.no, run your search and Google would give preference to Norwegian content. It is a great way to get alternative viewpoints on a topic and more relevant "local" information on a subject. Now, regardless of which version of Google you go to, you will see the same results tailored for your home location.<br/><br/>In a blog posting <a href="https://www.blog.google/products/search/making-search-results-more-local-and-relevant/">Making search results more local and relevant</a> Google says:<br/><blockquote>Today, we’ve updated the way we label country services on the mobile web, the Google app for iOS, and desktop Search and Maps. Now the choice of country service will no longer be indicated by domain. Instead, by default, you’ll be served the country service that corresponds to your location. So if you live in Australia, you’ll automatically receive the country service for Australia, but when you travel to New Zealand, your results will switch automatically to the country service for New Zealand. Upon return to Australia, you will seamlessly revert back to the Australian country service.</blockquote><br/>This confirms that mobile search is what Google is concentrating on. After all it is, one assumes, where Google makes most of its money but it does not help professional researchers.<br/><br/>There is a way around it but it is rather long-winded. You need to go to Settings - use either the link in the bottom right hand corner of your Google home page or the one near the top of a search results page - and click on Advanced Search .<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Google_Settings.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3847 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Google_Settings.gif" alt="Google Settings Menu" width="193" height="261" /></a><br/><br/>On the Advanced Search screen scroll down to “Then narrow your results by…” and use the pull down menu in the region box to select the country.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Advanced_Search_Region.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3848 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Advanced_Search_Region.gif" alt="Google Advanced Search Region" width="450" height="179" /></a><br/><br/>I ran a search on Brexit in google.co.uk, google.no and a few other country versions of Google. All gave me essentially the same results.<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Google_UK_Brexit.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3849 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Google_UK_Brexit.gif" alt="Google UK results for Brexit" width="450" height="508" /></a><br/><br/>Using the region filter and selecting Norway as the country I am given the following by Google:<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Google_No_Norway_English.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3850 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Google_No_Norway_English.gif" alt="Google Norway Region Filter" width="450" height="434" /></a><br/><br/>Notice, though, that Google is giving me English articles or English versions of them. Google has decided that I would prefer English articles and I have to scroll down to number 10 and beyond to see pages in Norwegian. To get a broader view of what is being said in Norway about Brexit I have to go back into settings, click on Languages and choose Norwegian/Norsk.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Google_No_Norwegian.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3851 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Google_No_Norwegian.gif" alt="Brexit search with region and language filter on" width="450" height="529" /></a><br/><br/>Oh - and you get slight different results if you go through a VPN and set Norway as the country.<br/><br/>What worries me even more is that Google could do away with the advanced search screen and the region filter with it.<br/><br/>Google says:<br/><blockquote>We’re confident this change will improve your Search experience, automatically providing you with the most useful information based on your search query and other context, including location.</blockquote><br/>No, Google. You have just made things more difficult for those of us who conduct serious, in-depth research. The way I feel about this change at the moment is that if you were a person I would take a baseball bat to your head!<br/><br/>UPDATE: In response to David Pearson's comment and reminder below.<br/>Including a site command e.g. site:no in the search works relatively well for this particular example (Norway) and gives good but slightly different results. It will, of course, miss Norwegian sites that are registered as .com or other international domains. The amount of overlap (or lack of it) will vary depending on the country. It's another one to add to the list of strategies, which I am sure will become longer, for dealing with this problem.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-39871366338858007772017-08-16T15:34:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:34:00.267+00:00RIP OFFSTATSI'm back at work from an extended break only to find that my favourite statistics portal OFFSTATS is no more :-( <a href="https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/about-us/collections/decommissioned-databases">https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/about-us/collections/decommissioned-databases</a><br/><br/>I received an email from them explaining that they no longer have the resourcing available to maintain and develop the database. Also, as much of the content can now be discovered through other approaches they felt the need for this type of search tool was not so relevant as it had been a few years ago.<br/><br/>A shame but understandable from their point of view. It was always a popular resource on my search workshops and often featured in the participants' "Top Ten Tips". It was one of the few resources of this type in which humans assessed and monitored the quality and relevance of the sites listed. Very sorry to see it go.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-37048239641345564592017-06-10T10:58:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:34:00.032+00:00Another example of Google's Knowledge Graph getting it wrongVoting in the UK election has finished and the results are in, but the dust has most definitely <strong>not</strong> settled. It looks as we in the UK are in for interesting times ahead. It would help those of us researching the various political parties and policies if Google could at least get the basics right, such as who is now the Member of Parliament for a particular constituency. I am in Reading East and we have switched from a Conservative MP to Labour (Matt Rodda). Out of curiosity, I tried a search in Google on Reading East constituency. This is what Google's Knowledge Graph came up with:<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Reading_east_Google_Knowledge_Graph.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3832" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Reading_east_Google_Knowledge_Graph.gif" alt="Reading East Google Knowledge Graph" width="423" height="316" /></a><br/><br/>I took this screenshot yesterday (Friday, 9th June) at around 8 a.m. and expected to see Rob Wilson given as the MP throughout . I was impressed, though, to see that the snippet from Wikipedia correctly gives Matt Rodda as our MP. Whoever had updated that entry was pretty quick off the mark. Possibly a Labour Party worker? The rest of the information, which is taken from Google's database of "facts", is either wrong, confusing or nonsensical.<br/><br/>"Member of Parliament: Rob Wilson" - wrong. But he was MP until around 4 a.m. on the 9th June when the result of the election in Reading East was announced, so perhaps I am expecting a little too much from Google to be that quick about updating its facts.<br/><br/>"Major settlement: Reading" - yes we are part of Reading but I find it strange that it is referred to as a major settlement rather than a town.<br/><br/>"Number of members: 1" - not sure why that is there as each constituency can only have one MP.<br/><br/>"Party: Conservative" - correct for Rob Wilson but the new MP is <strong>Labour. </strong><br/><br/><span class="_xdb">"European Parliament constituency: </span><span class="_Xbe kno-fv">South East England" - correct!</span><br/><br/>The final two lines "Replaced by:" and "Created from:" had me totally flummoxed. The entries are the same - Reading North, Reading South, Henley. Reading North and Reading South were constituencies formed by splitting the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_North_(UK_Parliament_constituency)">Reading constituency in 1950. They were then merged back into Reading in 1955, re-created in 1974, and in 1983 Reading East and West were formed</a> (Yes, it's complicated!). As for Henley, it is not even in the same county. I can only think that this comes from Caversham (now part of Reading East) being part of Oxfordshire until 1911, when it probably did fall within the Henley constituency. The "Replaced by" is wrong because Reading East has not been replaced by anything. Google can't even blame a template that has to be filled in with information at all costs because different information appears in the Knowledge Graph depending on the constituency.<br/><br/>Here is the information for Aylesbury:<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Constituency_Google_Aylesbury.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3833" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Constituency_Google_Aylesbury.gif" alt="" width="416" height="270" /></a><br/><br/>And the one for Guildford:<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Constituency_Google_Guildford.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3834" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Constituency_Google_Guildford.gif" alt="" width="419" height="274" /></a><br/><br/>Going back to the how up to date the information is, how quickly does Google update their "facts". Rob Wilson was still our MP mid Friday afternoon. I submitted feedback using the link that Google provides at the bottom of each Knowledge Graph but this morning (10th June) nothing had changed. I'll update this posting when it does change.<br/><br/>I would hope that most people would look at the other links in the search results, in this case the latest news, but preferably a reliable authoritative source. The list of <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/">MPs on the UK Parliament website </a>would be an obvious choice but might take a day to be updated after an election. Just don't rely on Google to get it right.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-63909298047104882732017-02-14T09:57:00.000+00:002019-12-01T09:33:59.710+00:00More Google weird resultsOk, we know that Google often does strange things with our searches but much of the time it is not obvious that something odd has happened. There are usually some "good enough" answers scattered through the first 20-30 results so that we shrug off the rest as "well, that's Google for you". Occasionally, though, one comes across a search that seems to break Google. One such example was reported on Twitter this morning by <a href="https://twitter.com/randfish/status/831353122786201600">Rand Fishkin (@randfish)</a>. The search was<br/><br/>this is the best * on the internet<br/><br/>At the top of the first results page Google reported that it had found over a billion results but when @randfish moved to the next page Google showed just "2 of 12 results"! Whatever happened to the other billion or so?<br/><br/>I tried the search myself on my laptop and straightaway got three results but on repeating it that was reduced to two.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Google-Weird-results-1.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3819 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Google-Weird-results-1.gif" width="500" height="237" /></a><br/><br/>I repeated the search having logged out of my Google account, cleared cookies, used Incognito and different browsers. Same results.<br/><br/>I tried a phrase search and the number of hits increased to 17.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Google-Weird-results-Phrase.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3820 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Google-Weird-results-Phrase.gif" width="500" height="306" /></a><br/><br/>Then I removed the quotation marks, got back to my original set of two and ran Verbatim on it. Over a billion hits but, bizarrely, Google claimed to have gone straight page 2!<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Google-Weird-results-Phrase-Verbatim.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3821 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Google-Weird-results-Phrase-Verbatim.gif" width="500" height="346" /></a><br/><br/>Note: you normally can't see the number of results after you have run Verbatim because it is obscured by a second menu line. You can toggle between that menu and the number of hits by clicking on the Tools button.<br/><br/>Then I tried a phrase search followed by Verbatim: two results but different from my first set.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Google-Weird-results-Phrase-Verbatim-1.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3822 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Google-Weird-results-Phrase-Verbatim-1.gif" width="500" height="242" /></a><br/><br/>I could have gone on trying various advanced search commands but it is very clear that Google is having problems with this particular search. And, no, I have no idea what is going on here.<br/><br/>If Google messes with your search to this extent or comes back with far fewer results than you would expect don't struggle with it; just go to another search engine. As an asterisk is used in this search to stand in for a missing word <a href="http://www.yandex.com/">Yandex.com</a> would be the best option. (See <a href="https://yandex.com/support/search/how-to-search/search-operators.html">https://yandex.com/support/search/how-to-search/search-operators.html</a> for a list of the main operators).<br/><br/> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-72353391686420937172017-02-10T16:51:00.000+00:002019-12-01T09:33:59.416+00:00New Creative Commons image search - back to the drawing board I'm afraidLocating images that can be re-used, modified and incorporated into commercial or non-commercial projects is always a hot topic on my search workshops. As soon as we start looking at tools that identify Creative Commons and public domain images the delegates start scribbling. Yes, Google and Bing both have tools that allow you to specify a license when conducting an image search but you still have to double check that the search engine has assigned the correct license to the image. There may be several images on a webpage or blog posting each having a different copyright status and search engines can to get it wrong. Flickr's search also has an option to filter images by license and there are sites that only have Creative Commons photos, for example <a href="http://www.geograph.org.uk/">Geograph</a>. But the problem is that you may have to trawl through several sites before you find your ideal photo.<br/><br/>Creative Commons has just launched a new image search tool that in theory would save a lot of time and hassle. You can find some background information on the service, which is still in beta, at <a href="https://creativecommons.org/2017/02/07/new-cc-search/">Announcing the new CC Search, now in Beta</a>. The search screen is at <a href="http://ccsearch.creativecommons.org/">http://ccsearch.creativecommons.org/</a>.<br/><br/>The Creative Commons collections are currently included in the search come from the Rijksmuseum, Flickr, 500px, New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can search by license type, title, creator, tags and collection.<br/><br/><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3806 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-1.gif" alt="CC Image Search screen" width="450" height="317" /> As well as search there are social features that allow you to add tags and favourites to objects, save searches, and there is a one-click attribution button that provides you with a pre-formatted text for easy attribution. There is also a list creation option. To make use of these functions you need to register, which at present can only be done via email.<br/><br/>I started with a very simple search: cat<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-2.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3807 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-2.jpg" alt="CC Image Search on cat" width="450" height="288" /></a><br/><br/>Hover over the image and you have options to Save to a list and to favourite it. It will also show you the title of the image and who created it. Click on the image and you are shown further information including tags together with a link that takes you to the original source.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-3.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3808 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-3.gif" alt="Image information and tags" width="500" height="206" /></a><br/><br/>So far, so good although I did think it rather odd that the image should have tags for both norwegian forest cat and nebelung but assumed that perhaps the cat was a cross between the two.<br/><br/>I decided to narrow down the search to norwegian forest cat, and this is where things started to go very wrong. There were a handful of cats but the rest seemed irrelevant. I put the terms inside quotation marks "norwegian forest cat". It made no difference.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-4.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3809 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-4.jpg" alt="CC Search Norwegian Forest Cat" width="450" height="299" /></a><br/><br/>I had a look at one of the non-cat images and the reason it had been picked up was that the creator called themselves Norwegian Forest Cat! So I unticked the options on the search screen for creator and title, leaving just the tags. At least the results were now cats but most did not look anything like norwegians.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-5.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3810 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-5.jpg" alt="CC Image search Norwegian Forest Cat in tags " width="431" height="378" /></a><br/><br/>I looked at the tags for one of the short haired mogs.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-6.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3811 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-6.gif" alt="CC Image tags" width="361" height="381" /></a><br/><br/>It seems that this is a very special creature. It is both a domestic long haired cat and a domestic short haired cat, a norwegian forest cat and a manx, a european shorthair and an american short hair. The creator of this photo must have had a brainstorm when allocating the tags, or perhaps Flickr's automatic tagging system had kicked in? It does sometimes come up with truly bizarre tags. I clicked through to Flickr to view the original.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-7.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3812 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-7.gif" alt="Flickr tags" width="235" height="215" /></a><br/><br/>The original tags were very different. The two sets had only cat, pet, and animal in common. I have no idea where the tags on the CC photo page had come from and could not find any information on how they had been assigned. This was repeated with all of the dozen images that I looked at in detail.<br/><br/>I decided to give up on cats and try one of my other test searches: Reading Repair Cafe. I know that there are about 75 images on Flickr that have been placed in the public domain. I know that because I took them. To make it easier on CC Search I choose to search titles and tags, and just the Flickr Collection. The results were total rubbish.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-8.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3813 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/CC-Search-8.jpg" width="500" height="312" /></a><br/><br/>Looking at the details of the photos it became clear that CC Search is carrying out an OR search. Phrase searching did not work and using AND just created a larger collection of irrelevant images. (I confess I gave up after trawling through the first 12 pages). After the cat experience I checked the tags on a few photos but no sign of Reading Repair Cafe anywhere.<br/><br/>A search on Flickr and using the license filter worked a treat:<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Flickr_Comparison_w_CC.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3814 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Flickr_Comparison_w_CC.jpg" alt="Flickr Reading Repair Cafe" width="500" height="340" /></a><br/><br/>Google did a pretty good job too but to get perfect results I had to do phrase search. (Note: as this is a regular test search of mine, I signed out of my Google account and went "Incognito" to stop Google personalising the results. )<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Gogle_Image_CC-1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3815 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Gogle_Image_CC-1.jpg" alt="Google Image Search Reading Repair Cafe" width="500" height="310" /></a><br/><br/>Bing also did an excellent job at finding the photos.<br/><br/>Admittedly, CC Image Search is a prototype and in beta so one would expect there to be a few glitches. However, glitches seem to be the norm. I ran several more tests and the main stumbling block is that it combines terms using OR. There is no other option or any commands one can use to change that. My second concern is where on earth do the tags on the CC Search photo pages come from? Most of them do not appear on the original source page and many are completely wrong. I'm afraid it is back to the drawing board for CC Search.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-15845048167788203732017-01-11T15:11:00.000+00:002019-12-01T09:33:59.210+00:00Google link command gone - never much good anyway!Search Engine Roundtable reports today that Google is advising against using the link operator in search. It seems that there have been complaints on Twitter and elsewhere that it is returning some odd results.<br/><br/>I have never been a fan of the command; it only ever returned a small sample of pages that link to a known page, so I don't mention it in my workshops unless asked about it by one of the participants. When I saw the advice from Google I gave it a final go on my own domain rba.co.uk and got nearly 300,000 hits. "Wow," I thought, "amazing!" Glancing through the first few results it became obvious that Google had ignored all the punctuation and was running a text search and looking for variations on rba including RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland).<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/link_command_gone.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3802 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/link_command_gone.gif" width="500" height="453" /></a><br/><br/>No great loss, but a sign that other more useful operators and commands may be for the chop.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-88943572134340841302016-12-29T12:43:00.000+00:002019-12-01T09:33:58.933+00:00Seasonal opening times - never trust Google's answers (or Bing's)This is my usual Christmas/New Year reminder to never trust Google's answers (or Bing's) on opening times of shops over the holiday season, especially if you are thinking of visiting small, local, independent shops.<br/><br/>I was contemplating going to our True Food Co-operative but suspected that it might still be shut. A search on my laptop for True Food Emmer Green opening times gave me a link to their website at the top of the results list. On the right hand side was a knowledge graph with information on the shop, it's opening times and reviews that had been compiled from a variety of sources . For most of it the source of the information is not given. On my mobile and tablet it is the knowledge graph that appears at the top of the results list and takes up the first couple of screens.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Opening_Hours_True_Food_Google.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3794 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Opening_Hours_True_Food_Google.gif" width="379" height="432" /></a><br/><br/>It claims that the shop is "Open today 10am-6pm" [today is Thursday, 29th December].<br/><br/>When I go to True Food's website it clearly states near the top of the home page that they are currently closed and re-opening on 4th January 2017.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Opening_hours_True_Food.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3795 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Opening_hours_True_Food.gif" width="500" height="244" /></a><br/><br/>Google gets it wrong again in the knowledge graph but so does Bing. So, always check the shop's own website, and if you are searching on your mobile or tablet please make the effort to scroll down a couple of screens to get to links to more reliable information.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-86288705042780943272016-11-15T10:35:00.000+00:002019-12-01T09:33:58.430+00:00How to write totally misleading headlines for social mediaOr how to seriously annoy intelligent people by telling deliberate lies.<br/><br/>A story about renewable energy has been doing the rounds within my social media circles, and especially on FaceBook. It is an article from The Independent newspaper that has been eagerly shared by those with an interest in the subject. The headline reads "Britain just managed to run entirely on renewable energy for six days".<br/><br/>This is what it looks like on FaceBook:<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Britain_Entriely_Run_Renewable_Energy_1.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3775 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Britain_Entriely_Run_Renewable_Energy_1.gif" alt="britain_entriely_run_renewable_energy_1" width="481" height="379" /></a><br/><br/>My first thought was that, obviously, this was complete nonsense. Had all of the petrol and diesel powered cars in Britain been miraculously converted to electric and hundreds of charging points installed overnight? I think that we would have noticed, or perhaps I am living in a parallel universe where such things have not yet happened. So I assumed that the writer of the article, or the sub-editor, had done what some journalists are prone to do, which is to use the terms energy and electricity interchangeably. Even if they meant "electricity" I still found the claim that <strong>all</strong> of our electricity had been generated from renewable sources for six days difficult to believe.<br/><br/>Look below the headline and you will see that the first sentence says "More than half of the UK’s electricity has come from low-carbon sources for the first time, a new study has found." That is more like it. Rather than "run <strong>entirely</strong> on <strong>renewable</strong> energy" we now have "<strong>half</strong> of the UK's <strong>electricity</strong> has come from <strong>low-carbon sources</strong>" [my emphasis in both quotes]. But why does the title make the claim when straightaway the text tells a different story? And low carbon sources are not necessarily renewable, for example nuclear. As I keep telling people on my workshops, always click through to the original article and <strong>read</strong> it before you start sharing with your friends.<br/><br/>The title on the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/half-electricity-low-carbon-first-time-report-drax-climate-change-environment-a7414936.html">source article</a> is very different from the facebook version as is the subtitle.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Britain_Entriely_Run_Renewable_Energy_2.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3776 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Britain_Entriely_Run_Renewable_Energy_2.gif" alt="britain_entriely_run_renewable_energy_2" width="480" height="544" /></a><br/>We now have the title "Half of UK electricity comes from low-carbon sources for first time ever, claims new report", which is possibly more accurate. Note that "renewable" has gone and we have "low carbon sources" instead. Also, the subtitle muddies the waters further by referring to "coal- free".<br/><br/>If you read the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/half-electricity-low-carbon-first-time-report-drax-climate-change-environment-a7414936.html">article in full</a> it tells you that "electricity from low-emission sources had peaked at 50.2 per cent between July and September" and that happened for nearly six days during the quarter. So we have half of electricity being generated by "low emission sources" but, again, that does not necessarily equate to renewables. The article does go on to say that the low emission sources included UK nuclear (26 per cent) , imported French nuclear, biomass, hydro, wind and solar. Nuclear may be low emission or low carbon but it is not a renewable.<br/><br/>Many of the other newspapers are regurgitating almost identical content that has all the hallmarks of a press release. As usual, hardly any of them give a link to the original report but most do say it is a collaboration between Drax and Imperial College London. If you want to see more details or the full report then you have to head off to your favourite search engine to hunt it down. It can be found on the Drax <a href="http://electricinsights.co.uk/">Electric Insights</a> webpage. Chunks of the report can be read online (click on Read Reports near the bottom of the homepage) or you can download the whole thing as a<a href="http://electricinsights.co.uk/Drax_Electric_Insights_Report_2016_Q3.pdf"> PDF</a>. There is also an option on the Electric Insights homepage that enables you to explore the data in more detail.<br/><br/>This just leaves the question as to where the FaceBook version of the headline came from. I suspected that a separate and very different headline had been specifically written for social media. I tested it by copying the URL and headline of the original article using a Chrome extension and pasted it into FaceBook. Sure enough, the headline automatically changed to the misleading title.<br/><br/>To see exactly what is going on and how, you need to look at the source code of the original article:<br/><br/><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3777 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Britain_Entriely_Run_Renewable_Energy_3.gif" alt="britain_entriely_run_renewable_energy_3" width="500" height="174" /><br/><br/>Buried in the meta data of page and tagged "og:title" is the headline that is displayed on FaceBook. This is the only place where it appears in the code. The "og:title" is one of the open graph meta tags that tell FaceBook and other social media platforms what to display when someone shares the content. Thus you can have totally different "headlines" for the web and FaceBook that say completely different things.<br/><br/>Compare "Britain just managed to run entirely on renewable energy for six days" with "Half of UK electricity comes from low-carbon sources for first time ever, claims new report" and you have to admit that the former is more likely to get shared. That is how misinformation spreads. Always, always read articles in full before sharing and, if possible, try and find the original data or report. It is not always easy but we should all have learnt by now that we cannot trust politicians, corporates or the media to give us the facts and tell the full story.<br/><br/><strong>Update:</strong> The original press release from DRAX "<a href="http://www.drax.com/press_release/50-britains-electricity-now-low-carbon-according-ground-breaking-new-report/">More than 50% of Britain’s electricity now low carbon according to ground-breaking new report</a>"Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-40269316128675798232016-10-31T12:26:00.000+00:002019-12-01T09:33:58.154+00:00WebSearch Academy presentations - edited highlightsEdited highlights from the presentations I gave at the WebSearch Academy on 17th October 2016 at the Olympia Conference Centre, London are now available on SlideShare. They are also available on authorSTREAM. These are selected slides from the presentations; if you attended the event and would like copies of the full sets please contact me.<br/><br/>The presentations are:<br/><br/><a href="http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-2954068-new-dimensions-search-seeing-hearing-viewing-edited-highlights/">New Dimensions in Search: seeing, hearing viewing</a> (takes you to authorSTREAM). Searching for images, video and audio.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-2954072-websearch-academy-google-edited-highlights/">WebSearch Academy: If not Google then what?</a> (takes you to authorSTREAM). Looks at alternatives to Google and some specialist tools.<br/><br/>SlideShare options for both are given below.<br/><br/><iframe style="border: 1px solid #CCC; border-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 100%;" src="//www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/4tIN2genlgHfXI" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"> </iframe><br/><div style="margin-bottom: 5px;"><strong><a title="New Dimensions in Search: seeing, hearing viewing (edited highlights)" href="//www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/new-dimensions-in-search-seeing-hearing-viewing-edited" target="_blank">New Dimensions in Search: seeing, hearing viewing (edited highlights)</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="//www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman" target="_blank">Karen Blakeman</a></strong></div><br/><div style="margin-bottom: 5px;"></div><br/><br/><div> </div><br/><div> </div><br/><br/><iframe style="border: 1px solid #CCC; border-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 100%;" src="//www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/ncZzdkKOiztPK2" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"> </iframe><br/><div style="margin-bottom: 5px;"><strong> <a title="WebSearch Academy: If not Google then what? (Edited highlights)" href="//www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/websearch-academy-if-not-google-then-what" target="_blank">WebSearch Academy: If not Google then what? (Edited highlights)</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="//www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman" target="_blank">Karen Blakeman</a></strong></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-69794513171202940462016-10-22T16:15:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:57.938+00:00Google results: review stars may not refer to what you think they doThe contract for our domestic electricity supply is ending next month so I am trawling through cost comparison and energy supplier websites to check tariffs for our next contract. (UK readers can skip the rest of this explanatory paragraph). I don't know what the situation is in other countries but in the UK the gas and electricity suppliers are forever inventing a variety of tariffs priced significantly less than their "standard" rates to entice you to sign up. The lower priced tariffs are generally only available for a year, or two years at most. At the end of the contract the customer is usually transferred to the more expensive standard rate unless they actively seek out an alternative. The existing supplier is obliged to inform the customer of the new tariffs that will be on offer but the onus is on the customer to inform the company which tariff, if any, they wish to switch to. For other suppliers' tariffs the customer has to do their own research.<br/><br/>Price comparison sites are a good starting point to identify potential alternatives but the only way to check that the a tariff meets all of your criteria, of which price may be just one of many, is to go direct to the supplier's website. Today I spent most of the morning drawing up the shortlist.<br/><br/>The next step in my strategy was to look at customer reviews on the comparison websites, social media, discussion boards and to run a Google search on each supplier. The reviews and comments generally spanned several years and while the history of a company's customer service performance can be useful it is the last 12-18 months that are most relevant. This is where limiting the search to more recent information by using Google's date option comes into play. Having spent an hour or so to get this far, and with my brain beginning to wilt, it was tempting to read just the Google snippets for the reviews; but they can convey the wrong overall impression. Google sometimes creates snippets by pulling together text from two or more sections of a page that may be separated by several paragraphs and which may be about completely different products or topics. Never take the snippet at face value and always click through to the original, full article.<br/><br/>One of the energy providers on my short list is Robin Hood Energy, which is a not-for profit company run by Nottingham City Council and has only recently been made available to customers outside of Nottingham. Customer reviews are therefore less plentiful than for many of the other utilities. The results from a search on<br/><br/><code>Robin Hood Energy customer reviews</code><br/><br/><code> </code> included one from Simply Switch. Underneath the title and URL is a star rating of 4.4 from 221 reviews and one could be forgiven for assuming that this refers to Robin Hood Energy. This is reinforced by the text in the second half of the snippet: "Robin Hood guarantee their customers consistently low prices ... rated 4.4/5 based on 221 reviews". <a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Robin_Hood_Customer_Reviews.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3758 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Robin_Hood_Customer_Reviews.gif" alt="robin_hood_customer_reviews" width="470" height="106" /></a><br/><br/>The dots are important in that they represent a missing chunk of text between the two pieces of information. When I looked at the web page itself the rating was nowhere to be found in the main body of the text. It was in the footer of the page and referred to the Simply Switch site.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Simply_Switch_Reviews.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3760" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Simply_Switch_Reviews-300x77.gif" alt="simply_switch_reviews" width="300" height="77" /></a><br/><br/>A reminder, then, to never rely on the snippets for an answer, and always click through and read the whole web page.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-50010520686241710432016-10-06T12:41:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:57.724+00:00Google Blogger loses links and blog lists: what to do nextGoogle Blogger has done it again. A major update to the service was rolled out at the end of September and many users woke up to find that the links and blog lists they had so carefully created had gone. See the <a href="https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/blogger/6S1rW0Ucwi4;context-place=forum/blogger">Blogger Help Forum</a> for some of the postings and comments on the incident. Blogger engineers are supposedly working to restore the lost information but it "may take up to several days." Or never! This is not the first time that blog content has gone missing after an update. A few years ago an update somehow removed the most recent posts from people's blogs. Most of them were eventually recovered but a few disappeared without trace.<br/><br/>The lesson learned from that experience was back up your blog. In Blogger the import and backup tool is under Settings, Other and at the top of the page. Note, though that this will only backup the text of pages, posts and comments. It does not backup any changes you have made to the template, or the content of the gadgets in your sidebars such as links lists and blogrolls. For the template click on Template in the lefthand sidebar and then on Backup/Restore. This will save the general layout of the gadgets but not the content. For that you will need to copy and save the content for each gadget or save a copy of the content and HTML of your blog. <a href="http://www.peggyktc.com/2015/04/back-up-your-blogger-blog.html">Back up your Blogger blog: photos, posts, template, and gadgets </a>has details of what you need to do.<br/><br/>And don't forget your photos. For those use Google's Takeout service at <a href="https://www.google.com/settings/takeout">https://www.google.com/settings/takeout</a>.<br/><br/>If you don't have a copy of your lists of links then see if you can access an older cached version of your blog via Google or Bing and save the whole page, or take screen shots. If you try this several days after the event you may be out of luck. Mine were still in the cached page for up to 2 days but have now gone. In Google, use the 'cache:' command, for example:<br/><br/>cache:yourblogname.blogspot.com<br/><br/>An alternative is to search for your blog and next to your entry in the results lists there should be a small downward pointing green arrow. Click on it and then on the 'Cached' text to view the page. This works in both Google and Bing and, again, the sooner you do this the better.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Bing_Cached_Option.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3745 size-full" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Bing_Cached_Option.gif" alt="bing_cached_option" width="506" height="312" /></a><br/><br/>If none of that works then try the <a href="https://archive.org/">Wayback Machine</a>. Type in the URL of your blog and see if they have any snapshots.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Wayback_Blog.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3746 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Wayback_Blog.gif" alt="wayback_blog" width="345" height="333" /></a><br/><br/>Still no joy? Then either hang around a while longer to see if the Blogger engineers manage to revive your lists or start rebuilding them from scratch. If you haven't looked at them in a while, maybe now is the time to review the content anyway.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-46906885469471399892016-09-19T16:03:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:57.406+00:00Essential Non-Google Search Tools for Researchers - Top TipsThis is the list of Top Tips that delegates attending the UKeiG workshop on 7th September 2016 in London came up with at the end of the training day. Some of the usual suspects such as the 'site:' command, Carrot Search and Offstats are present but it is good to see Yandex included in the list for the first time.<br/><ol><br/> <li><strong> Carrotsearch</strong> <a href="http://search.carrotsearch.com/carrot2-webapp/search">http://search.carrotsearch.com/carrot2-webapp/search</a> or <a href="http://carrotsearch.com/">http://carrotsearch.com/</a> and click on the “Live Demo” link on the left hand side of the page.<br/>This was recommended for its clustering of results and also the visualisations of terms and concepts via the circles and “foam tree”. The Web Search uses eTools.ch for the general searches and there is also a PubMed option.<br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3731" align="aligncenter" width="400"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/CarrotSearch-PubMed2.gif"><img class="wp-image-3731" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/CarrotSearch-PubMed2-300x257.gif" alt="Carrot Search Foam PubMed Foam Tree" width="400" height="343" /></a> Carrot Search Foam PubMed Foam Tree[/caption]</li><br/></ol><br/><ol start="2"><br/> <li><strong>Advanced Twitter Search </strong><a href="http://twitter.com/search-advanced">http://twitter.com/search-advanced<br/></a>The best way to search Twitter! Use the Advanced Search <a href="https://twitter.com/search-advanced">http://twitter.com/search-advanced</a> or the click on the “More Options” on the results page. There is a detailed description of the commands and how they can be used at <a href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/twitter-advanced-search">https://blog.bufferapp.com/twitter-advanced-search</a><strong><em> </em></strong></li><br/></ol><br/><ol start="3"><br/> <li><strong> Yandex</strong> <a href="http://www.yandex.com/">http://www.yandex.com/<br/></a>The international version of the Russian search engine with a collection of advanced commands - including a proximity operator - that makes it a worthy competitor to Google. Run your search and on the results page click on the two line next to search box.<br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3734" align="aligncenter" width="400"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Yandex-Top-Tips.gif"><img class="wp-image-3734" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Yandex-Top-Tips-300x139.gif" alt="Yandex Advanced Search" width="400" height="186" /></a> Yandex Advanced Search[/caption]<br/><br/>Alternatively, use the search operators. Most of them are listed at <a href="https://yandex.com/support/search/how-to-search/search-operators.xml">https://yandex.com/support/search/how-to-search/search-operators.xml</a>. There is also a /n operator that enables you to specify that words/phrases must appear within a certain distance of each other, for example:<br/><br/><code>"University of Birmingham" nanotechnology /2 2020</code><br/><br/>There are country versions of Yandex for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Turkey. You will, though, need to know the languages to get the best out of them and apart from Turkey they use a different alphabet.</li><br/></ol><br/><ol start="4"><br/> <li><strong> Millionshort</strong> <a href="http://millionshort.com/">http://millionshort.com/</a><br/>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. The page that best answers your question might not be well optimised for search engines or might cover a topic that is so specialised that it never makes it into the top results in Google or Bing.Originally, as its name suggests, it removed the top 1 million but you can change the number that you want omitted. There are filters to the left of the results enabling you to remove or restrict your results to ecommerce sites, sites with or without advertising, live chat sites and location. The sites that have been excluded are listed to the right of the results.</li><br/></ol><br/><ol start="5"><br/> <li><strong> site: command<br/></strong>Use the site: command to focus your search on particular types of site, for example include site:ac.uk in your search for UK academic websites. Or use it to search inside large rambling sites with useless navigation, for example site:www.gov.uk. You can also use -site: to exclude individual sites or a type of site from your search. All of the major web search engines support the command.</li><br/></ol><br/><ol start="6"><br/> <li><strong> Microsoft Academic Search</strong> <a href="http://academic.research.microsoft.com/">http://academic.research.microsoft.com/<br/></a>An alternative to Google Scholar.<em>“Semantic search provides you with highly relevant search results from continually refreshed and extensive academic content from over 80 million publications.”</em>This was recently revamped and although it now loads and searches faster than it used to the new version has lost the citation and co-author maps that were so useful. It can be a useful way of identifying researchers, publications and citations but do not rely on the information too much. It can get things very wrong indeed. For example, I’ve found that for some reason the affiliation of several authors from the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava is given as the Technical University of Kenya!</li><br/></ol><br/><ol start="7"><br/> <li><strong> Wolfram Alpha</strong> <a href="https://www.wolframalpha.com/">https://www.wolframalpha.com/<br/></a>This is very different from the typical search engine in that it uses its own curated data. Whether or not you get an answer from it depends on the type of question and how you ask the question. The information is pulled from its own databases and for many results it is almost impossible to identify the original source, although it does provide a possible list of resources. If you want to see what WolframAlpha can do try out the examples and categories that are listed on its home page.</li><br/></ol><br/><ol start="8"><br/> <li><strong> OFFSTATS - The University of Auckland Library</strong> <a href="http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/">http://www.offstats.auckland.ac.nz/<br/></a>This is a great starting point for locating official statistical sources by country, region or subject. All of the content in the database is assessed by humans for quality and authority, and is freely available.</li><br/></ol><br/><ol start="9"><br/> <li><strong> Meltwater IceRocket</strong> <a href="http://www.icerocket.com/">http://www.icerocket.com/<br/></a>IceRocket specialises in real-time search and was recommended for inclusion in the Top Tips for its blog search and advanced search options. There is also a Trends tool that shows you the frequency with which terms are mentioned in blogs over time and which enables you to compare several terms on the same graph.<br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3739" align="aligncenter" width="400"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Ice-Roecket_Brie.gif"><img class="wp-image-3739" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Ice-Roecket_Brie-300x180.gif" alt="IceRocket Trends" width="400" height="240" /></a> IceRocket Trends[/caption]<br/><br/>Very useful for comparing, for example, mentions of products, companies, people in blogs.</li><br/></ol><br/><ol start="10"><br/> <li><strong> Behind the Headlines NHS Choices</strong> <a href="http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx">http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx<br/></a>Behind the headlines provides an unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories that make the news. It is a good source of information for confirming or debunking the health/medical claims made by general news reporting services, including the BBC. For each “headline” it summarises in plain English the story, where it came from and who did the research, what kind of research it was, results, researcher’s interpretation, conclusions and whether the headline’s claims are justified.</li><br/></ol>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-25492862271617325572016-09-01T11:25:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:57.202+00:00Don't expect advanced search features to exist foreverA couple of weeks ago I wrote about the problems I was having with Google Verbatim (<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2016/08/11/google-verbatim-on-the-way-out/">Google Verbatim on the way out?</a>). This morning I ran through a checklist of commands that I am demonstrating in a webinar and it seems that Verbatim is back working as it should. Don't hold your breath, though. Three times this year I have seen Google Verbatim disappear or do strange things and a couple weeks later return to normal. Verbatim may be here to stay or it may not, but you cannot depend on many advanced search commands to always work as you expect. So either learn different ways of making Google treat your search in the way you require or use a different search engine.<br/><br/>Unfortunately, disappearing or unreliable functionality is not confined to just Google. Bing used to have a very useful proximity command that allowed you to specify how close you wanted your words to be to one another. The "near:n" operator is still listed in Bing's <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff795620.aspx">list of advanced search commands</a> and, although it seems to do something and reduce the number of results, it does not behave as described.<br/><br/>There is also the endangered list such as DuckDuckGo's sort by date option. In fact all of DuckDuckGo's web search options will probably soon change or disappear as it is currently <a href="https://duck.co/help/company/yahoo-partnership">powered by Yahoo!</a> which has been bought by Verizon. Who will DuckDuckGo turn to if Verizon does combine Yahoo with AOL as has been stated in the press?<br/><br/>Get to know several different search tools really well and, for the ones that you use regularly, find out how they work and who provides the search results.<br/><br/> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-35084504891631378062016-08-11T10:02:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:56.892+00:00Google Verbatim on the way out?<strong>Update: 1st September 2016</strong> - Verbatim seems now to be working as it should. I hope it stays that way but on three occasions this year I have seen it work one day, then not the next and then back to working again.<br/><br/>We have become accustomed to Google rewriting and messing about with our searches, and dropping search features that are infrequently used. The one option that could control most of Google's creative interpretation of our queries was Verbatim but that now looks as though it could be destined for the axe as well.<br/><br/>A reminder of what Verbatim does. If you want to stop Google looking for variations on your terms, ignoring double quote marks around phrases, or dropping words from the search Verbatim is, or rather was, the quickest way to do it. If you are using a desktop or a laptop computer, run your search as normal. On the results page click on 'Search Tools' at the end of the line of options that appears at the top. Then, from the second line of options that should appear, choose 'All results' followed by Verbatim. The location of Verbatim on other devices varies.<br/><br/>Verbatim has been invaluable when searching on titles of research papers, legislation or researching topics for which you expect or want to retrieve very few or zero results. You might be researching rare adverse events associated with a pharmaceutical drug or wanting to confirm that what you are about to patent has not already been published and is out there for all to see. Or the topic is so specific that you only expect to see a handful of documents, if that. So, sometimes, no or a low number of results is a good thing. But Google does not like zero or small numbers of results and that is when Google's search rewrite goes into overdrive.<br/><br/>I had noticed for a few months that Verbatim was not always working as expected but had hoped it was one of Google's experiments. The problem has not gone away and the really confusing part is that Verbatim is still doing something but not what I would expect.<br/><br/>I was working in Penryn in July and took the opportunity to wander around the place. Inevitably, I googled some of the sites I had seen for further information but one threw up the Verbatim problem. I was particularly interested in what looked like a memorial but didn't have time to seek out information on site. Looking at the photo afterwards I can where the plaque was (to the right and next to the flagpole) but I missed it on the day.<br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3714" align="aligncenter" width="300"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Penryn_Memorial_Garden_20160719_Blog.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-3714" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Penryn_Memorial_Garden_20160719_Blog-300x204.jpg" alt="Memorial Garden Penryn" width="300" height="204" /></a> The memorial and garden commemorates 18 residents of Penryn who were killed during an air raid in May 1941.[/caption]<br/><br/>I did see a sign on the wall surrounding the area, though, telling me that it was "two" on the Penryn Heritage Trail.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Penryn_Heritage_Trail_Blog_20160719.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3715" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Penryn_Heritage_Trail_Blog_20160719-259x300.jpg" alt="Penryn Heritage Trail" width="259" height="300" /></a><br/><br/>A quick, basic search told me that it is called the Memorial Garden but I wanted to find out more. I searched on Penryn memorial garden heritage trail.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Verbatim-failure-1.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3716 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Verbatim-failure-1.gif" alt="Google test search omitting terms 1" width="500" height="456" /></a><br/><br/>This gave me 15,900 results but Google had decided to leave out Penryn so I was seeing plenty of information about heritage trails but they were not all in Penryn. I prefixed Penryn with intext: to force Google to include it in the search but then the word heritage was dropped. I applied Verbatim to the search without the intext: command.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Verbatim-failure-2.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3717 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Verbatim-failure-2.gif" alt="Verbatim-failure-2" width="500" height="310" /></a><br/><br/>This gave me 732 results but even though I had applied Verbatim Google had dropped 'memorial' from the search. I prefixed memorial with intext: and got 1230 results with little change to the top entries. And no, I have no idea why there are more hits for this more specific search. I can only assume that other terms were omitted but I was not seeing that in my top 50. I then did what I should have done right from the start and searched on Penryn, and "memorial garden" and "heritage trail" as phrases. When Verbatim was applied this came back with 22 results but no detailed information about the garden. I started to tweak the search terms a little more. Verbatim would drop one, I would 'intext:' them and they were then included but I began to suspect that I was being too specific. So I dropped "heritage trail" from the search and cleared Verbatim: 19,300 results with all of the top entries being relevant and informative.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Penryn_Memorial_Garden.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3720 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Penryn_Memorial_Garden.gif" alt="Search on Penryn memorial garden" width="493" height="551" /></a><br/><br/>This emphasises that it often pays to keep your search simple, and I mean<strong> really</strong> simple. Including too many terms, however relevant you may think they are, can be counter-productive. I would have realised earlier that my strategy was too complex had Verbatim behaved as I assumed it would and it had included all of my terms with no variations or omissions.<br/><br/>I ran a few of my test searches to see if this is now a regular feature. One was:<br/><p style="text-align: center;">prevalence occupational asthma diagnosis agriculture UK</p><br/>The results came back as follows:<br/><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Ordinary search - prevalence missing from some of the documents, 1,750,000 results<br/>Verbatim search - diagnosis and agriculture missing from some of the documents, 15,300 results<br/>Verbatim with quote marks around missing terms - same results as plain Verbatim with diagnosis and agriculture still missing<br/>Verbatim search but prefixing missing terms with intext:, 14,200 results</p><br/>I changed the search slightly to:<br/><p style="text-align: center;">incidence occupational asthma diagnosis agriculture UK</p><br/>Some of the results were:<br/><p style="padding-left: 30px;">Ordinary search - incidence and agriculture missing from some of the documents, 2,210,000 results<br/>Verbatim search - incidence and agriculture missing, 15,500 results<br/>Ordinary search on intext: incidence occupational asthma diagnosis intext:agriculture UK, 848,000 results<br/>Verbatim intext:incidence occupational asthma diagnosis intext:agriculture UK, 15,000 results</p><br/>I saw the same pattern with a few other searches. I also tested the searches in incognito mode, and both signed in and signed out of my Google account. There was very little difference in the results and Verbatim behaved in the same way.<br/><br/>It looks as though Verbatim still runs your search without any variations on your terms or synonyms but that it now sometimes chooses to omit terms from some of the documents. To keep those terms in the search you have to prefix them with intext:. Double quote marks around the words are sometimes ignored. This is an unnecessary change and defeats the object of having an option such as Verbatim.<br/><br/>More worrying, though, is that Google obviously thinks Verbatim needs "fixing". But what it has done is to make the option more difficult to use, which in turn will result in people using it less often than they do already. And if Google sees that use is decreasing it will simply get rid of it altogether. Time to swot up on the few remaining Google commands, or use a different search tool.<br/><br/>If you are interested in learning more I am running workshops about <a href="http://www.cilip.org.uk/uk-einformation-group/events/ukeig-training-new-google-new-challenges-0">Google</a> and <a href="http://www.cilip.org.uk/uk-einformation-group/events/ukeig-training-essential-non-google-search-tools-1">alternative search tools</a> in September in London.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-85850946304463365872016-07-22T09:56:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:56.681+00:00Google's 'daterange:' command gone for goodIt looks as though Google's daterange: command really has gone for good. Over the last 6 months it has been a case of "now it works, now it doesn't" but I've been testing it regularly over the past couple of months and it seems to have permanently stopped working . People have been reporting the problem in various forums since the start of this year.<br/><br/>So why bother using "daterange:" instead of the date/time option under Search tools? Because the latter does not work with Verbatim. It doesn't happen often but there are occasions when I need Google to search using my terms exactly as I have typed them without any omissions or variations AND limit the search to a specified time period. The only way to do that was to first run the search with the daterange included in the string and then apply Verbatim to the results.<br/><br/>It is getting to the point where Google is totally useless for advanced, focussed research. What will be next for the chop? filetype? site? If you haven't done so already, it is time to learn how to use the alternative search tools. Cue blatant plug for my September workshop with UKeiG : <a href="http://www.cilip.org.uk/uk-einformation-group/events/ukeig-training-essential-non-google-search-tools-1">Essential non-Google search tools</a> !Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-77737756746967419932016-07-13T17:34:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:56.369+00:00Alternatives to Google: Carrot Search and eTools.chTwo of the services I cover in my workshop for researchers on alternatives to Google are <a href="http://search.carrotsearch.com/carrot2-webapp/search">Carrot Search</a> and <a href="http://www.etools.ch/">eTools</a>.ch, and recently one of the people who had attended the session in April asked me to confirm what Carrot Search used to provide its main results. Strictly speaking, neither Carrot Search nor eTools are Google free: eTools is a metasearch tool that has Google as one of its sources and Carrot Search uses eTools for its web search. At the start of the year, Carrot Search offered 7 options for searching under tabs across the top of the search screen including Web, "wiki", Bing, News, Images, PubMed and Jobs. Web search used eTools.ch to provide the results.<br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3688" align="aligncenter" width="500"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_March_2016.gif"><img class="size-full wp-image-3688" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_March_2016.gif" alt="Carrot Search " width="500" height="148" /></a> Carrot Search - beginning of 2016[/caption]<br/><br/>The range of options has now been reduced to just three: the more transparently labelled eTools Web Search, PubMed and Jobs.<br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3689" align="aligncenter" width="477"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_July_2016.gif"><img class="size-full wp-image-3689" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_July_2016.gif" alt="Carrot Search options July 2016" width="477" height="210" /></a> Carrot Search options July 2016[/caption]<br/><br/> <br/><br/>This makes sense as the number of accesses to Bing via the api was always limited and I could never get the news or images options to work. eTools in any case is a metasearch engine covering 17 tools including Google, Bing and Wikipedia so the extra Carrot Search tabs did seem to be unnecessary. The full list can be seen on the eTools home page.<br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3690" align="aligncenter" width="417"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/eTools_list.gif"><img class="wp-image-3690 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/eTools_list.gif" alt="eTools list of search engines" width="417" height="514" /></a> eTools list of search engines[/caption]<br/><br/>This is where it gets interesting. It appears that Carrot Search does not just copy the results from a search on eTools. I ran a search on Brexit in Carrot Search and compared the results from eTools Worldwide and eTools United Kingdom. All of the sets were different so Carrot Search must be doing some additional analysis and processing.<br/><br/>Carrot Search doesn't just list the results but also organises them into topics or Folders that are displayed on the left hand side of the screen. These can be a useful way of narrowing down your search.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_Brexit_1.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3691" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_Brexit_1.gif" alt="Carrot Search Brexit results" width="500" height="286" /></a><br/><br/>Carrot Search offers two other ways of displaying results: Circles and Foam Tree.<br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3692" align="aligncenter" width="500"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_Brexit_2.gif"><img class="wp-image-3692 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_Brexit_2.gif" alt="Carrot Search Circles" width="500" height="360" /></a> Carrot Search Circles[/caption]<br/><br/> <br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3693" align="alignnone" width="500"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_Brexit_Foam_Tree_13_July.gif"><img class="wp-image-3693 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CarrotSearch_Brexit_Foam_Tree_13_July.gif" alt="Carrot Search Foam Tree" width="500" height="357" /></a> Carrot Search Foam Tree - 13th July 2016[/caption]<br/><br/>Both show the density of terms in the top 100 results and allow you to click on an area to add the term or phrase to the search. In addition I am finding that the Foam Tree is an interesting way of monitoring changes in news coverage and social media discussions on a topic, product or company. Yesterday, when I ran the search on Brexit, there was an area representing Theresa May. Today, that had been replaced with one for David Cameron. I assume that is because the news coverage has been concentrating on David Cameron's last day as Prime Minister and his last Prime Minister's Questions (PMQ) in Parliament . Later he goes to see the Queen to officially resign as Prime Minister. Tomorrow, with Theresa May as our new Prime Minister and a new Cabinet, the Foam Tree could have a very different structure so I shall be looking at it periodically to see if and how it reflects changes in events.<br/><br/>As I mentioned earlier <a href="http://www.etools.ch/">eTools.ch</a>, which is behind the main Carrot Search web search, is a metasearch engine covering 17 tools. It also has options to select a country from a drop down list (Worldwide, Swtzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, UK) and a language (All, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish). Either or both of these give you completely different views and opinions on a subject.<br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3695" align="aligncenter" width="400"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/eTools_CH.gif"><img class="wp-image-3695 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/eTools_CH.gif" alt="eTools - Switzerland, all languages" width="400" height="391" /></a> <strong>eTools - Switzerland, all languages</strong>[/caption]<br/><br/> <br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3696" align="aligncenter" width="400"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/eTools_CH_French.gif"><img class="wp-image-3696 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/eTools_CH_French.gif" alt="eTools_CH_French" width="400" height="389" /></a> <strong>eTools - Switzerland, French</strong>[/caption]<br/><br/> <br/><br/>[caption id="attachment_3697" align="aligncenter" width="400"]<a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/eTools_ES.gif"><img class="wp-image-3697" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/eTools_ES.gif" alt="eTools - Spain, all languages" width="400" height="389" /></a> <strong>eTools - Spain, all languages</strong>[/caption]<br/><br/>It is a convenient way of gathering a range of foreign language information, especially on European events, and is easier than searching individual country versions of Google or Bing. The disadvantages are that the range of countries and languages is limited and many of the articles will not be in English. Nevertheless, I often find it helpful at the start of a piece of research as I get a general feel for the type and range of information that is available.<br/><br/>Carrot Search and eTools.ch are just two of the tools that I cover in my workshop on alternatives to Google. If you are interested in finding out more, the next session is being organised by UKeiG and will be held in <a href="http://www.cilip.org.uk/uk-einformation-group/events/ukeig-training-essential-non-google-search-tools-1">London on Wednesday, 7th September 2016</a>. Further details are available on the <a href="http://www.cilip.org.uk/uk-einformation-group/events/ukeig-training-essential-non-google-search-tools-1">UKeiG website</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-42046625295384152292016-06-02T13:47:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:55.956+00:00Searching for the height of Ben Nevis - how hard can it be?If you have attended one of my recent search workshops, or glanced through the slides, you will have noticed that I have a new test query: the height of Ben Nevis. It didn't start out as a test search but as a genuine query from me. A straightforward search, I thought, even for Google.<br/><br/>I typed in the query 'height of ben nevis' and across the top of the screen Google emblazoned the answer: 1345 metres. That sort of rang a bell and sounded about right, but as with many of Google's Quick Answers there was no source and I do like to double or even triple check anything that Google comes up with.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben_Nevis_1.gif"><img class="alignleft wp-image-3669 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben_Nevis_1.gif" alt="Ben_Nevis_1" width="509" height="467" /></a><br/><br/>To the right of the screen was a Google Knowledge Graph with an extract from Wikipedia telling me that Ben Nevis stands at not 1345 but 1346 metres above sea level. Additional information below that says the mountain has an elevation of 1345 metres and a prominence of 1344 metres (no sources given). I know have three different heights - and what is 'prominence'?<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben-Nevis-3.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3672 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben-Nevis-3.gif" alt="Ben-Nevis-3" width="448" height="464" /></a><br/><br/>After a little more research I discovered that prominence is not the same as elevation, but I shall leave you to investigate that for yourselves if you are interested. The main issue for me was that Google was giving me at least three slightly different answers for the height of Ben Nevis, so it was time to read some of the results in full.<br/><br/>Before I got around to clicking on the first of the two articles at the top of the results, alarm bells started ringing. One of the metres to feet conversions in the snippets did not look right.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben_Nevis_2.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3671 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben_Nevis_2.gif" alt="Height of Ben Nevis search results 3" width="480" height="242" /></a><br/><br/>So I ran my own conversions for both sets of metres to feet and in the other direction (feet to metres):<br/><br/>1344m = 4409.499ft, rounded down to 4409ft<br/><br/>4406ft = 1342.949m, rounded up to 1343m<br/><br/>1346m = 4416.01ft, rounded down to 4416ft<br/><br/>4414ft = 1345.387m, rounded down to 1345m<br/><br/>As if finding three different heights was not bad enough, it seems that the contributors to the top two articles are incapable of carry out simple ft/m conversions, but I suspect that a rounding up and rounding down of the figures before the calculations were carried out is the cause of the discrepancies.<br/><br/>The above results came from a search on Google.co.uk. Google.com gave me similar results but with a Quick Answer in feet, not metres.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben-Nevis-4.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3673 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben-Nevis-4.gif" alt="Ben-Nevis-4" width="431" height="239" /></a><br/><br/>We still do not have a reliable answer regarding the height of Ben Nevis.<br/><br/>Three articles below the top two results were from BBC News, The Guardian and Ordnance Survey - the most relevant and authoritative for this query - and were about the height of Ben Nevis having been remeasured earlier this year using GPS. The height on the existing Ordnance Survey maps had been given as 1344m but the more accurate GPS measurements came out at 1344.527m or 4411ft 2in. The original <a href="https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/news/2016/gb-officially-taller-ben-nevis.html">Ordnance Survey article</a> explains that this is only a few centimetres different from the earlier 1949 assessment but it means that the final number has had to be rounded up rather than down. The official height on OS maps has therefore been increased from 1344m to 1345m. So Google's Quick Answer at the top of the results page was indeed correct.<br/><br/>Why make a fuss about what are, after all, relatively small variations in the figures? Because there is one official height for the mountain and one of the three figures that Google was giving me (1346m) was neither the current nor the previous height. Looking at the commentary behind the Wikipedia article, which gave 1346m, it seems that the contributors were trying to reconcile the height in metres with the height in feet but carrying out the conversion using rounded up or rounded down figures. As one of my science teachers taught me long ago, you should always carry forward to the next stage of your calculations as many figures after the decimal point as possible. Only when you get to the end do you round up or down, if it is appropriate to do so. And imagine if your Pub Quiz team lost the local championship because you had correctly answered 1345m to this question but the MC had 1346m down as the correct figure? There'd be a riot if not all out war!<br/><br/>That's what Google gave us. How did Bing fare?<br/><br/>The US and UK versions of Bing gave results that looked very similar to Google's but with two different quick answers in feet, and neither gave sources:<br/><br/><strong>Bing UK</strong><br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben-Nevis-Bing-UK.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3674 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben-Nevis-Bing-UK.gif" alt="Ben-Nevis-Bing-UK" width="483" height="237" /></a><br/><br/><strong>Bing US</strong><br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Bing-Ben-Nevis-US.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3675 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Bing-Ben-Nevis-US.gif" alt="Bing-Ben-Nevis-US" width="494" height="236" /></a><br/><br/>I won't bore you with all of the other search tools that I tried except for <a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/">Wolfram Alpha</a>. This gave me 1343 meters or 4406 ft. At least the conversion is correct but there is no direct information on where the data has been taken from.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben-Nevis-WA.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3676 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ben-Nevis-WA.gif" alt="Ben-Nevis-WA" width="480" height="212" /></a><br/><br/>The sources link was of no help whatsoever and referred me to the home pages of the sites and not the Ben Nevis specific data. On some of the sites, when I did find the Ben Nevis pages, the figures were different from those shown by Wolfram Alpha so I have no idea how Wolfram arrived at 1343 meters.<br/><br/>So, the answer to my question "How high is Ben Nevis?" is 1344.527m rounded up on OS maps to 1345m.<br/><br/>And the main lessons from this exercise are:<br/><ol><br/> <li>Never trust the quick answers or knowledge graphs from any of the search engines, especially if no source is given. But you knew that anyway, didn't you?</li><br/> <li>If you are seeing even small variations in the figures, and there are calculations or conversions involved, double check them yourself.</li><br/> <li>Don't skim read the results and use information highlighted in the snippets - read the full articles and from more than one source.</li><br/> <li>Make sure that the articles you use are not just copying what others have said.</li><br/> <li>Try and find the most relevant and authoritative source for your query, and ideally a primary source. In this case it was Ordnance Survey. <a href="https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/news/2016/gb-officially-taller-ben-nevis.html">GB officially taller - Ben Nevis https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/news/2016/gb-officially-taller-ben-nevis.html</a></li><br/></ol>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-14090537212010534432016-05-27T14:54:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:55.753+00:00Small companies now allowed to be bigger ... or smallerOne of the services I provide is company research including official registry documents and accounts. Many registries, including, the UK's Companies House, make a significant amount of their data available free of charge. Some still charge for documents and a few insist that you register before you can even search for a company. If I know the information is freely available I usually point the client at the relevant website but a few people come back to me when they discover that the interface is in a foreign language. If registration and/or payment are required I'm often asked to search on the client's behalf because they just do not want the hassle of going through the registration process and recouping the cost of a small overseas transaction from their accounts department.<br/><br/>Regardless of whether the information is free or charged for, I often receive what I call a second stage request for more detailed accounts. Why is there no Profit & Loss? Where is the revenue/turnover figure? I then have to explain how the reporting and filing requirements differ depending on the country, or even state; and then I have the joy of taking the client through small company exemptions. Some people I know have only just got their head around the changes introduced by UK Companies Act 2006. I now have to tell them that this has changed yet again.<br/><br/>In March 2015 the UK Government approved new regulations that implement the requirements of the new EU Accounting Directive. The changes came into effect in the UK from 1 January 2016. There are a number of changes, which may reduce yet further the amount of information that small companies are required to provide, and there are also changes to what is deemed to a be a "small" company. Small companies can now be bigger.<br/><br/>A company can now qualify as small if meets at least two of the three following criteria:<br/><ul><br/> <li>turnover not more than £10.2m (previously £6.5m)</li><br/> <li>balance sheet total not more than £5.1m (previously £3.26m)</li><br/> <li>average number of employees not more than 50 (no change)</li><br/></ul><br/>Information on some of the other changes can be found on the Companies House Blog - <a href="https://companieshouse.blog.gov.uk/2016/02/29/changes-to-accounting-standards-and-regulations/">Changes to accounting standards and regulations</a>. The key ones are:<br/><br/><em>"... the removal of the ability for a small or medium-sized company to file abbreviated accounts with us at Companies House. A company will now be required to file the accounts they prepare for their members at Companies House (although a small company or micro-entity will usually be able to choose not to file their profit and loss account or director's report)."</em><br/><br/><em>"However, this does not mean that all small companies are now required to file full accounts, the very smallest companies may disclose less information by preparing micro-entity accounts. Other small companies may, instead of filing full accounts, choose to prepare a set of abridged accounts for their members and then file these with us."</em><br/><br/>So, as well as "small" being allowed to be bigger we now have even smaller companies or "micro-entities" who can choose to disclose less information. The whole thing is beginning to look as clear as mud!<br/><br/>The ICAEW has a useful overview of what is happening at <a href="http://www.icaew.com/en/technical/practice-resources/icaew-practice-support/practicewire/news/the-revised-uk-small-companies-regime">The revised UK small companies regime</a> but if you want to keep up with the latest updates then follow the <a href="https://companieshouse.blog.gov.uk/">Companies House Blog</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5379874338700810847.post-36241012772427939172016-04-28T12:51:00.000+01:002019-12-01T09:33:55.542+00:00Bing extends date search optionBing has at last extended its date search options. Until recently one could only limit results to the past 24 hours, past week or the past month, and then only in Bing US. Bing has now added a custom range on a par with Google.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Bing_Date_US_2.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3651 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Bing_Date_US_2.gif" alt="Bing_Date_US_2" width="483" height="379" /></a><br/><br/>The UK version of Bing has not had a date option until now but bizarrely has added the old, limited US selection.<br/><br/><a href="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Bing-Date-UK-2.gif"><img class="aligncenter wp-image-3650 size-full" style="border: 1px solid #000000;" src="http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Bing-Date-UK-2.gif" alt="Bing-Date-UK-2" width="432" height="256" /></a>It seems very strange that they haven't implemented the full US list. One can but hope that it will happen soon rather than in several years time, which is how long it has taken for this version to appear in Bing UK.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0