Trapping Topic-Based Information - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 109

Building your queries
Ask has a pretty spartan home page. here is an advanced search available
at ask.com/webadvanced, however. Options on the Advanced page include
the ability to narrow searches by the last time pages were updated or by
their geographic location. You can also specify what words must or must
not appear in a search, as well as words that should appear in a search. he
“should search” makes your search a little fuzzier—it weighs results which
have “should words” higher in the results, but doesn't completely eliminate
those results which don't have the “should words.” If you want to use words
that could really focus your topic but also have the potential to torch rel-
evant results, take advantage of Ask's “should search.”

hints
n

Take a look at the options to narrow your search on the right
side of the results page. They vary a lot in how useful they are.
some of them are actually interesting and potentially useful,
while others are downright ridiculous. ditto for the related
names search in the same place. Use these additional results as
a spur for inspiration, but don't expect them to be useful all of
the time.

n

notice that each of ask's results has a little pair of binoculars
next to it. hold your mouse over that pair of binoculars and
a little pop-up window displays, showing you what that page
looks like (Figure 7.3). This can come in handy when you're try-
ing to get a quick idea of a site but don't want to visit or check
for page load.

Figure 7.3
hold your mouse over
the binoculars and
you can quickly get
an idea of whether a
page is useful or not.