Where to search?
I guess where to search depends on what you are searching for, and what access you have to certain resources…here is an example of some free resources.
My search quest was for examples of vision statements.
Search queries:
“vision statement”
“vision statement” list
“vision statement” examples
“vision statement” companyA
What else could I have used?
I’ve rated the following sources based on the subject matter, none of them did to well in returning me a list of examples…I found I had to surf around to collect examples…am I the first to do this, I bet I’m not.
Web - eg. Google…great
Articles - eg. Google Scholar…no good
Forums - eg. BoardTracker…not too bad
Topics guides - eg. Squidoo…nothing
Social Bookmark tags - eg. del.icio.us…great by not enough
Social Bookmark search - eg. del.icio.us…excellent
Blog tags - eg. Technorati…excellent
Blog search - eg. Technorati…no good (Google Blog Search returned incredibly better results)
Lists - eg. H20, Listible, Otavo (although Otavo leads into Q&A like FAQQLY and the like)
…I didn’t bother with lists, as they are still in their infancy, but Q&A is certainly an option (search the knowledge base first or ask a question)
NOTE: hmmm…wikis can be used as lists, but there really isn’t a wiki search engine.
Google really had some good articles, but I was moreso looking for examples, so I entered “examples”, I also tried “list” in the search and it still didn’t get me much closer.
del.icio.us tags was ok but there weren’t many hits.
del.icio.us search was excellent, it cuts out the noise you get with Google, all the hits were relevant…this is searching the human indexed web at its best, I was very excited by this (but like Google I couldn’t hone in on examples)
NOTE: I tested the bookmarkosphere using del.icio.us as the example because it probably has the largest data set to compare it to Google.
Technorati search didn’t do to well at all, especially when compared to Google Blog Search
Technorati Tags aced it, would you believe it, there are people that tag their blog posts - vision+statement
The icing on the cake is that via Technorati Tags I found a blog dedicated to this subject matter called Man on a Mission.
This is what I was looking for, I was looking for a hit in the search results that came from a compiled list…I was looking for a website that has already gone around and made a list of examples of vision statements, and I found it in the form of a blog…BINGO!!!!!!!
The A-Z list on the sidebar is handing it to me on a silver platter.
Thanks Technorati Tags…not only is this the human indexed web, but it is also the human created web (we create the content and also index it).
Thanks blogosphere, you have saved me lots of time by putting me in touch with an author who is already in the game…I didn’t have to re-invent the wheel.
[ADDED: By the way I found whonu a handy meta-utility search tool.]
[ADDED 9/08/06: It just occured to me to do a URL search in Google eg. inurl:visionstatement…this works a charm…actually this has the best results yet, virtually all hits are relevant]
![email.png](http://services.nexodyne.com/email/icon/GxbiQvgbwBgCnw%3D%3D/oIp%2BJMQ%3D/R01haWw%3D/0/image.png"){kind=icon}
John, maybe you might want to give Qwika a try. It is supposed to be searching wikis! Nice blog and I am a daily reader!
Comment by TonNet — August 8, 2006 @ 5:29 pm
John, I think what is interesting is that the web started with a human searchable index (Yahoo), then Google came.
Maybe we’re going to start seeing things shift back towards that original paradigm.
Comment by Chubbs — August 9, 2006 @ 4:12 pm