Staying up to date in the ever-changing Web search world: refine your Web-searching skills

Information Outlook, March, 2004 by Rita Vine

If google can be a verb, Web search must be a very hot topic. Numerous articles appear in the popular press about search engines, search skills, and "great" Web search sites. These days, it seems that everyone's an expert on Web search.

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Web search isn't just hot news, it's big business. (1) The Web search advertising marketplace has grown enormously over the past year, and predictions for future growth of major search properties such as MSN Search, Yahoo!, and Google remain strong. Many people working in and around the search business--including marketing consultants, search engine optimizers, technology writers, and librarians--are working hard to distinguish themselves from other experts in the field.

The vehicle of choice for many Web search professionals is an electronic newsletter. Cheap, easy to produce, and deliverable in many formats, subscription newsletters that provide news and views on aspects of Web searching are a proven way to reach potential customers. Most are free, so all the reader needs to do is select and subscribe.

The crowded newsletter marketplace makes newsletter selection challenging. There is no one perfect newsletter or updater service. Busy information professionals must select the best updater services for their specific needs, and find the best and most efficient ways to scan their selected services at the desktop. How, in the maze of choices, do you select the best Web search update tools for your personal and professional needs?

Types of Web Search News Services

There are thousands of free online news and current awareness services. Many are devoted to the topic of Web search and search engines; others may include information beyond Web search content. Technological advances enable newsletter creators to deliver news content in several different formats. Weblogs (also known as blogs) are probably the most popular option for update services. Blogging software enables a writer to quickly generate and post an information item in chronological order to a specific Web site without knowing much about Web page creation.

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Many blogs are configured to optionally deliver the same content in newsfeed format. A newsfeed is a distribution channel of information through a syndicate for publication. A newsfeed (often called an RSS feed (2)) allows potential users to view some Web site content without actually having to visit the site. The content is coded to display in specialized newsreader software (and many other formats), which permits the reader to update and follow several news services without having to visit several different Web sites.

E-mail newsletters, wherein an author sends periodic newsletters to a mailing list of subscribers, remain a popular distribution option. Newsletters arrive in your e-mailbox. Like weblogs, some e-mail newsletters may also have RSS feed options: this information will usually appear on the newsletter's Web site.

Some Web-based newsletters are available only on the Web--they may be configured as weblogs or simply as Web pages that the author updates from time to time. The onus is on the reader to revisit the site occasionally to see what's new.

While almost all update services have a public Web presence, subscription options vary. Some have RSS feeds for newsreader software; others have e-mail subscription options; others have neither. Newsfeed format is the best choice for ease of access, as well as simplified printing, downloading, and saving of newsletter content. Fully functional newsreader software enables the user to link to a variety of news channels with a simple URL. Once the channels are linked by the software, one click enables the software to retrieve updated news postings to the channel; mark old postings as read (so you don't end up rereading posts); and make light work of downloading, printing, and saving content.

The example in figure 1 is a screen shot of my own personal newsreader software. I use Newz Crawler (http://www.newzcrawler.com), which holds approximately 50 channels that I currently follow for my work as an Internet trainer and Web site selector. The list of channels is in the lefthand sidebar. It looks much like any computer directory. The list includes links from both RSS feeds and basic Web pages, which can also be linked by the newsreader software. The software enables rapid updating and catch-up, and has features that newsletter writers can use to quickly download, transfer, save, and auto-blog to their own weblogs. The software makes it easy to scroll through headlines at a glance and enables me to focus on the news items of greatest importance to me and ignore the rest.

Keeping your newsletter subscriptions together inside newsreader software saves a great deal of time. Since most information professionals will want to follow several update services, keeping them together for easy access makes sense. If newsreader software is unsuitable or unavailable, a good second option is to use e-mail subscription services. The easiest way to keep e-mail newsletters together is to create a rule in your e-mail reader software so that new updates are transferred automatically to a special e-mail folder.