Here's what I hate about Rollyo and other custom search engines: they only search web pages. What's the problem with that? The really good information on the web is in databases. Not just the research kind that the library buys for our patrons, but all kinds of databases: housing, books, music, news, health information, etc. A lot of these databases are free to search (think Amazon.com, WorldCat, Library of Congress). I think that Rollyo is a bit misleading, because people might think that they are harnessing the entire power of a website for their search when they aren't really. For example, if you create a Rollyo search for health information using medlineplus.gov and do a search for diabetes, you will come up with five results. If you use the search box at MedlinePlus, you will come up with 104 results just for diabetes, and even more results for diabetes combined with other health topics. What the web actually needs is a tool for combining the search boxes or search engines of different websites. That would be a really useful tool for serious research. Does anyone know of a tool like this? I'd LOVE to have it.
Of course, Rollyo is okay for websites that aren't database driven or have very transparent databases that are expressed in HTML (Amazon.com), but it doesn't necessarily search everything you think it's searching.
I set up a search for horse information from some of my favorite horse sites. Of course, not all my sites are available to use because of the formatting of the sites. One in particular, the user forum of Equinextion.com, is difficult to search because it's hosted by a popular user forum software company and every user forum is hosted at the same site. Rollyo doesn't allow for modifications to the URL that would allow me to search the section that belongs to Equinextion. Though Google Custom Search does, and I created a Google Custom Search for the same set of websites.
Here's my Rollyo search box:
Here's my Google search with the same sites:
For some reason, the Google search isn't working either. I have a separate custom Google Search just for Equinextion, using a URL pattern, and it works just fine. I don't get it. Grrr. You can see how very difficult it is to roll a search engine that actually searches for what you want it to search for. I'm a pretty advanced searcher and tech person, and I have a heck of a time getting a custom search to come out right. How about people who don't know how to evaluate the search engine they've just created? They'll think they're getting good information when they aren't, really. And that bugs me. Seems like false advertising, somehow.
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2 comments:
Amen, sister! We are on the same brainwave about Rollyo. I also found it limited and potentially misleading. If I only had the skillz, I'd build the tool Rollyo ought to be, with deep searching capabilities. Alas, such are skillz I have not got.
Yeah, I've got some pretty mad computer skillz too--but this one is beyond me. For now.... Though by the time I learn enough programming to build this kind of tool, some teen will have just whipped up the perfect deep web search tool while killing time on a Saturday afternoon. :-)
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