Toolkit Addition

ToolKit: Copernic

Tired of searching, finding great sites, adding them to your bookmark list (in an in uncategorized list, of course) and then spending time trying to find them again? It doesn't have to be this way anymore.

Copernic is a Web utility that helps you make sense out of searching. It takes the place of a search engine page, and like a meta-search engine, searches 10 Web search engines, including AltaVista's Usenet search, simultaneously. Copernic then ranks the results, displays them in a HTML format like a Web page, and includes a couple of lines of description so you don't need to waste time going to uninteresting sites.

There are no duplicate entries and no pages to click through. One neat and organized page gives you results that you can review, edit, and sort. As an added bonus, unlike some of the more well-known meta search engines, Copernic doesn't care from which engine it finds its sites. Sites are listed by titles and description--not by where they were found. This saves a bit of space and a bit of reading .

Best of all, it saves the searches. The added bonus here, is that Copernic then acts similarly to a bot. In other words, if you find yourself doing the same search over and over, you don't have to remember which sites you've already viewed. Copernic will simply indicate with a "new" icon which sites are new to the search since you last made it. So, let's say you search daily to find just that right prospect to recruit. You use the same keywords in your search. Copernic will save you time. It stores the keywords, checks lots of engines, saves your results, compares those results to the last time you searched, and indicates which sites are new.

According to ZDNet, which has a version of Copernic you can download for a free 30 day trial, the program's interface is based on Windows 98 so you'll be all set when your operating system changes.

Search Tips

Search Limiters: Alta Vista and HotBot

Hot Bot calls them meta words. Alta Vista refers to them as special functions. Either way, understanding a few simple terms can cut through the messiness of searching.

Anchors Anchor text is the stuff that appears as a hypertext link in a Web document. Often, the phrase consists only of click here. In better designed documents, though, the anchor text is a word or phrase of meaning. It could be resume, advanced programming skills, or anything else. The point is, you can search for these types of links.

Alta Vista
• In Alta Vista, use the format anchor:whatever.
• Try anchor:skills +computer. You'll get more than 19 million pages as a result, each with a hypertext link to a file called resume and each with the word computer in the text of the page.
• With anchor:skills +computer writing the results are cut in half.
• And when +resume is added, the results are narrowed to a bit more than 150,000.

HotBot
• The anchor function doesn't work with HotBot.
• You can try linkdomain:resume.
• This brings up one reference only.

Domains You can also search by particular domains, such as .edu, .org, .com, .mil, us, .de and so on. This can be helpful if you are looking for people with non-profit experience (.org), educational affiliation (.edu), military expertise (.mil), or to check up on sites outside the US.

Alta Vista
• Search for the education domains by typing domain:edu.
• You'll get almost 8 million edu pages.
• Type domain:edu "resume.html" and you'll get 210,000 resumes from educational institutions.
• You can modify it even further to narrow the search. Use additional keywords and Boolean operators.

HotBot
• Use the same format.
• Type domain:edu.
• You'll get more than 9 million pages.
• A search for domain:edu resume.html brings up only a few more than 5,000.
• You can add additional qualifiers, also.

URL Want to know who's linking to your competitors? Or, want to find how deeply buried resumes can be? Look for links. You don't need to know the domain, or the person's name. What you need is a creative way of looking for what might exist somewhere.

Alta Vista
• Alta Vista allows you to find all pages with your search word as any part of its URL, including file names.
• Type url:resume and you'll get 147,000+ results with the word resume somewhere in the URL.

HotBot
• Use the pull down menu at the search box.
• Type in the search, in this case resume.
• 153,000 resume pages will be returned.

Titles You can also search by the title of a Web page. This search is similar to a standard keyword search, except the keyword will no longer be buried in the text of the page. Rather, it will be a major component because it will be part of the page's title.

Alta Vista
• Type title:whatever
• Try looking for title dealing with PERL.
• You'll find about 5600 of them.

HotBot
• Use the pull down menu at the search box.
• Type in PERL
• You'll get back 20000 pages.
• Modify more.