How to search the web

Sometimes I stumble upon a page that just makes me go wow! Thats how I felt when I found Fravias "How to Search the Web: http://fravia.anticrack.de/howtosea.htm
It is so old and so relevant. I'm still absorbing it all. At least read Websearching, the sublime art.
As a search nut, my week was totally made by the discovery of a search feature for archive.org:
http://recall.archive.org/ What a great way to find retro products or ressurect long dead information.


Weather Instruments by mail order

Hi Garry,

I haven't checked out the "How To Search" stuff yet - but could always use some good tips on my searching.

However, I was looking through http://recall.archive.org/ (which you also linked to). Wow, excellent resource! I found some fascinating web pages from the past....

I already knew about http://www.archive.org/ but the problem with that is you have to know the URL already. So thanks for posting about the archive search engine. :)

- Dien

> Sometimes I stumble upon a page that just
> makes me go wow! Thats how I felt when I
> found Fravias "How to Search the Web:
> http://fravia.anticrack.de/howtosea.htm It
> is so old and so relevant. I'm still
> absorbing it all. At least read
> Websearching, the sublime art.
> As a search nut, my week was totally made by
> the discovery of a search feature for
> archive.org:
> http://recall.archive.org/ What a great
> way to find retro products or ressurect long
> dead information.

Using this site

http://recall.archive.org

to spot trends could be useful for your business. It could help you recognize which trends are increasing, and also which trends are dying away. If you want to succeed in business, it pays to keep on top of trends.

Let's try an easy one first....

Go here and type in

y2k

then hit the "go" button. You'll see a graph like this on the right



You'll see it peaks just before the year 2000 - as you'd expect. This is how many web pages there were with "y2k" in in them by year. (It's given as a percentage of the peak.)

Now, let's try something else. How about putting in "beanie babies". When you type in "beanie babies", you get this graph



You'll see that the beanie baby craze peaked around the year 2000, though also had a surge in late 2001/early 2002. However, the general trend is now on its way down.

Here's a third example. Type in "kiteboarding" - a relatively new sport. Here's what the graph looks like



As you can see, kiteboarding is just getting more popular!

So, if you were going to pick a business targeting the y2k market, the beanie babies market, or the kiteboarding market - clearly kiteboarding is the way to go.

I'm sure it's not foolproof, but it's a handy tool to help you make profits by spotting general trends.

- Dien Rice


Even More Information On New Business Trends In Here...

> Using this site
> http://recall.archive.org to
> spot trends could be useful for your
> business.

If you try "Internet Marketing" you'll see lots of peaks and valleys but it appears to be in an upward trend...

Interesting site :-)

-Dave




How To Profit From Public Domain Content

These graphs show the number of webpages with the searched-for term, in them.

In other words... leading up to Y2K there would have been many pages with Y2K in them, if for no other reason that term was used heavily by the news media, it was discussed on discussion boards, etc.

Beanie Babies... people put up a personal page listing what they are into - Hog Chasing, Nascar, Russian History, Beanie Babies. As those people "move along" in their life, they let the webpage expire. The number of pages with the searched-for term decline. Add news media write-ups. And it distorts the actual interest in the topic.

Kite Boarding. Same goes here. All the graph shows is the number of pages with that term. And all that might mean is that kite boarders are starting to write webpages about their sport.

I liken it to retail stores. Suddenly - it seems - certain types of store pop up everywhere. Only to just as suddenly disappear a short time later.

It doesn't mean the public is into what the store sells. Just that a lot of store owners try to make money from that product range. Their disappearance indicates the true public's interest.

Seeing a graph of "search terms" searched for, however, is a more true indication of what people are into.

Michael Ross

Hi Michael,

I agree, in that I said this wasn't foolproof. But I still think it's useful info.

> Seeing a graph of "search terms"
> searched for, however, is a more true
> indication of what people are into.

I agree - that would be great if some longer term data was available. Unfortunately, I only know of short-term weekly data - such as what you find at Google Zeitgeist or The Lycos 50. (They both have archives you can look through however.)

A bigger limitation is that you can't put in your own search terms. You're limited to just the 10 or 50 top terms they list. It's useless for niche markets. That's not the case with Recall - you can look up niche market data.

Hopefully the future will bring even more useful tools.

- Dien