What I Found
Search on judo. (yahoo)
1)Day, date, location- Mon. 11/3/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- Relaxed
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- Yahoo. I used this engine many times in the past. I like it because it is easy to use and is very helpful.
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- Judo and schools and hawaii. I chose these words and used the boolean operator "and" to make my search more specific to hawaii judo schools.
5)Number of expected hits or results-I expect 10,000
6)Number actually gotten-I recieved 19,310 matches
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I didn't know how much to expect and was surprised to see how many showed up.
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- Out of all those hits, only five were somewhat relevant. I found this out by actually looking at the pages that seemed so be relevant.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- Because I was relaxed, I didn't mind going through many of the hits that showed up. In fact, I actually visited some sights that weren't significantly relevant and found some interesting pages. I did not make use of the help documents because I felt that I knew enough to get what I was looking for.
Ratings
Search on judo. (webcrawler)
1)Day, date, location- Mon. 11/3/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- Relaxed
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- Webcrawler. I have also used this search engine many times in the past. I think that this engine is good but not as good as yahoo.
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- Judo and schools and hawaii. I chose these words and used the boolean operator "and" to make my search more specific to hawaii judo schools.
5)Number of expected hits or results- I expected at least 10,000 hits
6)Number actually gotten- 0 hits acually received.
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I was really surprised to see that I got zero hits! I thought that the search results would be at least close to each other.
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- Because I received no hits, nothing was relevant.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- My mood did not have much affect on my searching. In my opinion anyway.I did not however, make use of the link to search using the "Alta Vista pages."
Ratings
Search on beaches. (yahoo)
1)Day, date, location- Mon. 11/3/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- Slightly tired
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- Yahoo. As stated in the past, I have used this search engine many times before. And I do feel that it is a good search engine
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- Beaches and hawaii and north shore. I used chose these words because of my love for the beaches on the north shore.
5)Number of expected hits or results- I expected at least 1,000,000
6)Number actually gotten- I receved only 2 hits.
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I was totally shocked because I thought there would be a lot of information on beaches in hawaii.
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- None of the two hits were relevant. I found this out by going to the sites that I thought was related to what I was looking for. I think that I should have just typed in beaches and hawaii. I'm sure that I would have had a lot more hits.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- I think that my mood was starting to affect me at this point. I was starting to feel a bit tired and sort of lazy. I don't feel that the topic influenced my search strategy because I was experimenting using this search engine.
Ratings
Search on beaches.(webcrawler)
1)Day, date, location- Mon. 11/3/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- tired
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- Webcrawler. As stated in the past, I have used this search engine many times before. And I do feel that it is a good search engine
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- beaches and hawaii and north shore. I used the boolean operator "and" to narrow my search down.
5)Number of expected hits or results- I expected only a few hits because of my past search using yahoo.
6)Number actually gotten- I actually received 16,604 hits!
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I was surprised to see that I got so many hits! I guess it does matter which search engine you use!
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- Webcrawler listed the top 23 hits and of those, only five were relevant to what I was searching for. I found this out by viewing the pages that seemed relevant.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- I think that because I was getting really tired at this point, I was getting really impatient with waiting and looking through all of the possible hits. I think that there could have been more relevant hits but I was too lazy to search all of them.
Ratings
Search on spearfishing.(yahoo)
1)Day, date, location- Mon. 11/3/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- Really tired and slightly irritable.
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- Yahoo. As stated in the past, I have used this search engine many times before. And I do feel that it is a good search engine
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- Spearfishing and hawaii. I used "and" to narrow my search to topics on spearfishing in hawaii.
5)Number of expected hits or results- I expected only about ten hits because I didn't think that there would be a lot of information on this topic.
6)Number actually gotten- I actually got 4 hits.
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I wasn't too surprised at how little the amount of pages were shown.
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- I think that although I only got four hits, it wasn't that bad because of the fact that all of the hits were relevant to my search.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- I was glad that there weren't too many hits for me too search because I was getting really tired at this time. I know that I was fortunate to be using a computer that has a lot of speed. I would probably be very angry if I was using a slow computer.
Ratings
Search on spearfishing. (webcrawler)
1)Day, date, location- Mon. 11/3/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- Very tired
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- Webcrawler. I use this engine because it is easy to use and I am very comfortable using it.
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- spearfishing and hawaii. I used "and" to help narrow down my search.
5)Number of expected hits or results- I expected less than ten because of my past experience with yahoo.
6)Number actually gotten- I actually got 15.
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I was suprised to see that I got more than ten using webcrawler.
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- Although there were more hits, only 1 was relevant to my search. I guess it shows us how different it can be using different search engines.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- I think that I was lucky at this point to not have to search many reletive pages. I was getting really tired and impatient at this point. that is why I called it a day and went home. Because of my mood, I was reluctant in using the help documents. I just wanted to finish up and go home at this point.
Ratings
Search on Lanai. (yahoo)
1)Day, date, location- Tue. 11/4/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- Calm
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- I used the old faithfull engine yahoo. I have grown very accustomed to this search engine..
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- Lanai. No boolean operators were used here.
5)Number of expected hits or results- I expected at least 10,000
6)Number actually gotten- I received only 34 hits.
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I could not explain the shortage of hits, I think I may have typed it in wrong or something. I felt that there should have been at least 10,000 hits.
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- Of the 34 hits only six were relevant. Many of them were not about the island but rather on the balcony type of "lanai." I searched those pages that weren't directly related to the island and found that most of them didn't even have anythign close to my search.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- I am really glad that I didn't feel as tired as I did the other day. I found that I don't have much patience when I am tired and that one second seems like an eternity when waiting for things to happen on the web.
Ratings
Search on Lanai. (webcrawler)
1)Day, date, location- Tue. 11/4/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- Relaxed
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- Webcrawler. I use this engine because it is easy to use and I am very comfortable using it.
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- Lanai. No boolean operators were used.
5)Number of expected hits or results- I expected about 100 because of how little showed up on my search using yahoo.
6)Number actually gotten- I actually had 1,200 hits!
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I was shocked to witness such drastic differences.
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- Of these 1,200 hits, only 7 were somewhat relevant. I found this out by going through the pages that looked like they were related by looking at the topic summary in webcrawler.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- I feel that my relaxed mood played a part in looking over a bunch of pages that seemed relevant. I think that things would have been different if I was really tired. I know for a fact that I wouldn't look through as many pages as I did.
Ratings
Search on myself. (yahoo)
1)Day, date, location- Tue. 11/4/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- Relaxed
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- Yahoo. It is pretty consistant thats why I use it so often.
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- "kynan yonamine" I used the quotation marks to be specific in my selection because of the fact that there are other people with my last name out there.
5)Number of expected hits or results- I expected 0 or one if anything.
6)Number actually gotten- I actually received one hit!
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I was happy to see that I was actually on the web!
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- The one link that were linked to my name was relevant but I had to scroll down a lot to find my name, which by the way was in a newsletter.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- I felt kinda excited to see if I had anything on the web that other people could find if they typed my name in. My mood played no part in my search. I also had no use in the instructions to all of my searches because I usually found what I needed.
Ratings
Search on myself. (webcrawler)
1)Day, date, location- Tue. 11/4/97 Porteus
2)My mood or affective state- Relaxed
3)Name of search engine used and amount of times I have used it before and if I liked it or not- Webcrawler. This is one of the first search engines that I ever used and have been using ever since.
4)Search statement I typed in and why I chose those particular words. Was Boolean operators used? Why, or why not?- "Kynan Yonamine" I used the quotation marks to make sure that I didn't get other irrelevant hits.
5)Number of expected hits or results- I expected 1
6)Number actually gotten- I received 0
7)My reaction to numbers 5 and 6- I was kinda bummed that there was nothing.
8)My evaluation of the hits:What proportion were relevant and how I found this out- There was nothing relevant because of the fact that there were no hits to view.
9)How I felt about it? Did my mood influence how I searched or browsed? Did the topic influence your search strategy? Did I make use of the instructions or help documents- I think that my mood did not play any part in this search. I think that In time, I would receive more hits. I think that there is just too much new information that gets shoved into the web.
Ratings
2. Prior Generational Reports on Search Engines
Jill Umetsu's ReportIn Jill's report, she starts with a description of what a search engine is and how to use it if you are a beginner. She states that it is pretty much self explanatory and that it isn't very difficult to use. I must agree with her on this. Although I consider myself to be pretty unintelligible with computers and the internet, using the search engines was pretty easy. She has interesting information on the web search engines that she used which were: infoseek, lycos and yahoo. I found that we had similar feelings on how these search engines worked for us.
In Jill's report, she never does mention any real problems that she encountered while using the search engines. She simply states that they are pretty much self explanatory and simple to use. She also states that previous students had the same results when using search engines.
Ryan Mitsui's ReportRyan's report follows the same design of Jill's and gives information on what a search engine is, search engines for the inexperienced and past generations. also included is their thoughts on what they learned using these search engines. One interesting section of the report was about their online personality. I didn't even know that there was such a thing but I compared that to what we call a telephone personality or "phone etiquette" I guess its kinda like how we behave when we are online. I guess I could say that I am way more personable when I'm 0nline than in person. It could be that it is way more easier to speak with people when you can remain anonymous if you wish.
Ryan didn't seem to have encountered any problems while using the search engines, which by the way were, Magellen, excite, and infoseek. I agree with him when he says that it is really easy to use and that it is self-explanatory. I also agree with his idea that you should search with different search engines because the results may vary greatly. I found that Ryan had some experiences where the search engines took really long and it seemed that it froze up on him. I had experiences like that but only when I was using the crappy computers in the click lab. The computers in the porteus lab. rules!
Ginger Andrews ReportGinger's report is similar to that of Ryan's and Jill's only her's is a lot nicer and easier to read. No offense to Ryan or Jill. Like the others she tells what search engines are and what they do. One very interesting thing that I have learned from her page is the subject of Damon Robots. According to Ginger, these robots live to find information and index them.
Another interesting thing that I learned from Ginger's report was that Yahoo, which is frequently used by me and many other people, uses only approved categories and not keywords like other search engines. Hmm. Something to think about huh!
When she first started her search with yahoo she did not find what she wanted. The reason for this was just stated above. She later explains that searching using Alta Vista works better because it is more specific.
I found a lot of very interesting things from Ginger's page. She is on it when it comes to search engines! One last tip that I got from her was that the search engine Excite has a unique feature that makes searching easier for the user. She explains that it has somthing like a brain that learns different word that go together. For example, if you were to type in dog care, Excite would also show you pages with "pet grooming." I thought that this was so cool! I have to admit that I thought that search engines were pretty much thae same but after reading through her report, I learned many new things that I would normally have overlooked. In fact, many of her class mates didn't state as much useful information as she did.
I agree with most of these students when they say that these search engines are very easy to use. I know that because of my earliest experiences with computers. I remeber going on the computer and not knowing what search engines existed. I simply clicked on the "net search" button and off went in cyber space, searching for pictures of chicks! Just Kidding! But seriously, I see no problem with using search engines. I feel that they are a neccesity. I do however sugest that people learn how the search engines differ and how they have unique qualities that can benefit you if you know how to utilize them.
3. conclusion
After going through this long ride on the search engines, I feel that many positive things were learned. One of the first and most important things is that search engines are not very hard to use but can be so much more helpfull if you know how to harness its capabilities. There are so many search engines out there and they all basically try to do the same thing, which is to help you find information on a topic. The one thing to remember is that they all function differently and are useful in different ways. I also learned that slow computers make for frustrating searches and makes you want to throw ones fist into the screen when things freeze up!
My suggestions for the future generations is that you learn which search engines work best for you and learn how they function differently. I think that you will save a lot of time this way. Another great way to pick up on neat things is to go searching through past generations homepages. When you look there notice how those creative pages which are beautifully done usually contain much more usefull information than the plain, "just got by" pages.(kinda like mine) I swear, some of these pages have information that I would have never been told. I also got some really neat stuff like the virtual florist from Ginger's page. Hey, you might as well make use of what's available! Good luck and Don't piss Dr.James off!
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