How do I purge my search results?

Is my search engine test for “only”, SEARCH RESULTS, the best? . . .

• Is my search engine test for ?only?, SEARCH RESULTS, the best? . . . If not, what is a better test? I type in medicalcountries.com and click search in 20 search engines and note the quantity, quality, and relevancy of the search result. Note!!!! I am not researching the bells and whistles the search engine may have. I just want to evaluate the search results. (Excite and MSN don?t perform well by these criteria). If you have a better method I will test it. Your method must provide more of the said criteria. (my criteria). Just saying no is not an answer. You must provide a better test than I have suggested!!!!!!!!!!!! Remember, I do not want to use a search term that provides hundreds of results, because I cannot evaluate a search engine 100?s results. The search term, medicalcountries.com, used to evaluate search engines, provides just the right number of hits. But, what is your idea?

• Answer:

  Hello ed777, I'm glad I have answered your question. I do not speak or read Spanish, so I couldn't provide much insight into the best search engines for that language. (I presume that the questions listed in my initial post would be similar for search engines that focus on Spanish-language resources.) But like you, I sometimes search for information in languages I do not speak. It's difficult, but in some cases possible. I think it's one of the greatest challenges a search-engine user can face. You need skill, luck, and typically persistence. Taking the example of board-certified physicians in Mexico, I might start by seeing whether the Mexican government has relevant pages in English. The very first search might be: mexico government physicians. If I were very lucky, my initial set of searches could lead me to an answer for the question, particularly if the government site makes it easy to obtain the Spanish-language version of the relevant English-language page. If I were a little less lucky, I might still get some valuable information, such as the names (in English or Spanish) of the boards that certify physicians. My next step might be to search for terms in English on Google (which is my personal favorite search engine). I would hope that someone has provided a good resource in English. I could also try to include terms in Spanish, either from a Web translation tool or from my initial research, alongside the English terms. That would pick up resources that use both English and Spanish (such as the English and Spanish names of a board that certifies physicians). The more I learn from my initial searches, the more terms I would have for my later searches. If Google isn't coming up with the pages I need, I might try a metasearch engine such as Ixquick (http://www.ixquick.com/). That way, I could get a fairly good survey of what other search engines say about my queries. I could also try another broad search engine such as Yahoo!, or a more focused search engine such as on a site concerning physicians in Mexico or throughout the world. It can get more complicated than that. But the key points are that I hope that I'll find the right search engine and search terms to obtain the answer right away, but that for a complicated question, I expect to do multiple searches, perhaps on multiple search engines. As you can see from the unanswered questions on Google Answers, even Google Answers Researchers cannot easily find the answers to everything. But with the skill, luck, and persistence that I mentioned earlier, many answers can be found. (And if they can't be found via search engines, they might be found at a library, or from the scientist or the garbage collector as you mentioned.) Part of what I call "skill" is to choose the best search engines or web resources for the task. I tend to use Google first for most questions because I think it's good for many tasks. But if you're curious about other search engines and search techniques, you might consult some of the resources on the following page (such as those listed under "Search Engine News"): "Tool Kit for the Expert Web Searcher" (developed and maintained by Pat Ensor) Library & Information Technology Association http://www.lita.org/ala/lita/litaresources/toolkitforexpert/toolkitexpert.htm - justaskscott