Building Queries - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 74

When I irst started writing this topic, I wanted to immediately jump in
and tell you all about all the nity stuf you can do with information trap-
ping. I wanted to get right to the examples. I wanted to do the search engine
equivalent of a quadruple axel and explain how easy it would be for you to
do it, too.
However, it wouldn't have been particularly useful for me to show you how
to do the equivalent of a fancy jump if I hadn't yet shown you how to put
your skates on. Now that we've gone through the basic elements that are
part of every information trapper's toolbox, you know how to use your
browser as an information-trapping tool, how to ind and read RSS feeds,
and how to monitor pages using a page monitor.
Now it's time to learn what to trap, where to trap it, and why. his chapter
presents some of the theory behind, and the practice of, setting up good
queries. So go get a cool drink, sit down in front of your computer, and
crack your knuckles—we're into the fun part!
In later chapters, we'll tackle what to do with the information you ind,
how to keep up with your feeds (even when you're on the go!), and how to
republish what you gather.
For now, let's begin by thinking about the obvious question: what are you
hunting?
What Do You Want to Monitor?
What are you trying to trap in the irst place, and how are you going to do it?
What you're trying to trap can be boiled down to two types of information:
internal and external.
Internal information is information out on the Web that mentions, ref-
erences, or discusses a Web site you are interested in, whether it's your
own, your company's, or someone else's. Whenever I do presentations
about search engines and information trapping, I oten ind that many
people are wanting to track interest in their own Web sites. Monitoring
to determine what other Web sites are linking to your own, what they are
saying, or how many people are reading the RSS feed you're publishing is
ininitely valuable. We'll spend Chapter 6 looking at inding and trapping
internal information.