30 Search Tips - Mary Ellen Bates

Mamamusings has a good write-up of Mary Ellen Bates' presentation at Internet Librarian, in which Ms Bates covers '30 search tips in 40 minutes'. Lots here on new(ish) search engines, personalised searching and search histories on Google or Ask Jeeves, using Furl, searching podcasts, blog searching, and more. I liked this:

Use blogs to search hidden web content. A site may not be spidered by a search engine, but someone may well find and blog it. Use BlogDigger, BlogLines, Blogdex.net, blogsearch.google.com to find things indirectly—you’re leveraging the blog experts’s ability to find obscure content. (No time to dig up URLs…)

I'm finding this technique very useful, as I alluded in my post on companies banning blogs.

Thanks to Liz Lawley for a most comprehensive write-up.