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Information
Gathering Support
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- Systematic
Analytic Methods and Innovations offers a very complete
site which you can search.
However, examining a variety value (engineering, analysis,
management, method) study reports and additional viewpoints
are always beneficial. Such open approaches are a key
part of the Value Method.
- Each
search engine offers unique techniques for examining the
resources available on the world-wide-web. This variety
generates many benefits for the user. It also generates
some disadvantages. The variety also generates some disadvantages.
One of these is the many different syntax's required in
search approaches. We have collected entry points to selected
search engines and prelisted some ways to use them in
a search approach. Please add your own keywords and let
our preselections do the hard work.
Search
Assistance Advice
When
searching for information, carefully select keywords. Think
of what you are looking for and how someone would state
it in a paper or other document. Once the keywords are selected,
select a search engine and use its appropriate search format
(syntax) for the keywords. Some hints:
- Check
about using the base forms of words. If you want to look
at management control processes you may wish to specify
the search as:
- manage*
- control*
- process*
This search use will usually return all words with
these bases e.g., manage, management, manages, manager,
control, controller, controlled, controlling, process,
processes, processing, etc..
- Use
quotes to specify phrases. You may wish to use the plus(+)
or minus(-) key option to ensure an item is present or
exclude it respectively. (A + specifies a search item
must be present to be returned, and a - is used to specify
a search item that you wish to exclude from the results).
- Search
engines have different syntax's. If you think a search
result is not what you expected, try the next most common
options of search syntax. For example, some search engines
use the words; and in place of the plus(+), adj in place
of quotes('), and not in place of a minus(-). For example
a search for the phrase "value engineering"
that does not include the word study (you don't want specific
study results" would be either:
- +"value
engineering" -study
or
- value
adj engineering and not study
- In
some search engines there is an option to use the search
results and add options to search the result by. This
is a very valuable feature as it allows you to specify
a general area of interest, look over the results, and
add more specifics to narrow the results down. You can
do this several times. (InfoSeek is one of these.) Thus,
if you obtain too narrow a result, try out this feature.
If you don't like the result, use the back page option
on your browser, and try another limiting search approach.
Just repeat until you have found the kind of result you
are looking for.
- If
you are looking for a page that was only listed recently,
don't waste you time using an engine that takes over a
month to list sites. While you might be fortunate enough
to catch the listing coming on-line from an automatic
link, but it is unlikely. Check a service with a no standard
lag in listing time first.
- Try
one of the metasearch engines. However, remember that
they don't always adhere to the differing syntax requirements
in the search patterns they pass to the engine. Thus,
the result obtained may not be the same as you would obtain
if you did it yourself.
Search
Assistance Sites
Courtesy
of Systematic Analytic Methods and Innovation, search the
world wide web through these popular search and metasearch
engine companies.
| Try
these out with our starting samples and add you own options,
or erase the text and do it your own way. |
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| AltaVista
has one of the most comprehensive list of resources available.
It completely indexes every page. This index takes time.
Thus new pages take a while to be listed. Once listed,
AltaVista searches the listed webpages
regularly. Changes in key content or removal of a page
may not be reflected in a current search for as much as
a month. . |
The
above search will return pages that have the "value
engineering" or
"value
analysis" or
"value
management" phrase in them.
|
| Since
AltaVista completely lists each page, this feature can
be productively used to examine the available listings
of many value engineering studies and examples. |
This
search will return pages that have both the phrase "value
engineering" and the words study or case in them.
A commonly used phrase is "value engineering study"
and "value study". If you are listing a value
study on the web, we advise you should include one or
both these phrases in both you meta and first 300 or
so words.
You
should add to the above phrase a descriptive feature
you are looking for in a value study. For example adding
the item +transformer would specify that you want value
studies that include the word transformer.
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|
| Excite
has a very powerful feature. If you find a page that is
a lot like what you are looking for, you can click on
the more like this feature. It then will use the keywords
for that page to find similar pages. You don't even need
to know what the keywords were. Unfortunately, Excite
takes a very long time to register new pages and update
them should they be changed. |
The
above search will return pages that have the "value
engineering" or
"value
analysis" or
"value
management" or
"value
method" phrase in them.
|
| Excite
lists most of each page too. Thus, this feature can be
productively used to examine the available listings of
many value engineering studies and examples. |
This
search will return pages that have both the word study
and phrase "value engineering" in them. A
commonly used phrase is "value engineering study"
and "value study". If you are listing a value
study on the web, we advise you should include one or
both these phrases in both you meta and first 300 or
so words.
You
should add to the above phrase a descriptive feature
you are looking for in a value study. For example adding
the item +transformer would specify that you want value
studies that include the word transformer.
|
|
|
This
search engine uses other search engines to create its
database. Also, people purchase search words to become
listed at the top of the page. Pages are only listed on
the site through these two methods (other search engines
popularity or payment). They claim that this approach,
along with their superior database query system. produces
more valid results to queries. |
|
| InfoSeek
is an up and coming listing of web resources. It has a
highly comprehensive search engine. However, since it
appears to mainly use the "meta" tag or the
first 300-words, its accuracy is highly depending on how
the webpage is laid out. In addition to its capacity to
search the web, it has maps and both white and yellow
pages. When web pages are changed, their listing can be
updated (or deleted) within minutes by the site webmaster
using one of their page registration forms . This feature
makes InfoSeek on of the most up-to-date
listing on the web. |
The
above search syntax and words will gather information
on sites that have the words "value"
and "analysis"
or "engineering"as
one of the word combinations within the document meta
strings or first 300-words. The documents listed first
are the ones that use each these phrases most often.
Use the InfoSeek search within feature at the
bottom of the search page to search only within the
results obtained.
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|
| When
looking for a business or its website, the on-line version
of the Yellow pages may be the best option.A variety of
excellent services are present for this purpose. Links
to some of the best are available to the right.. |
USA
Online Business Directory
InfoSpace
Directories
|
A
word about Yahoo. You may not that it is not on our
list. Yahoo does an excellent job of searching pages
for categories. It is designed for people that like
to use a menu approach. However, it takes a long time
to get a site registered on Yahoo and it usually needs
to be general interest. Thus, its value is relatively
limited. Thus, for many search that do not relate to
entertainment, Yahoo generates a result that is of limited
use. We suggest the above search engines
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|
Highway61 is a metasearch engine that will submit
your search to Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, Infoseek Ultra,
Hotbot, Excite, etc., and then list the results on a single
page. For better results, refine your search using the
and/or option. Be patient for its return, more than one
search is going on. |
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| Superseek
is a metasearch engine that will submit your search to
10 search engines grouped into 3 categories. Only one
category can be search at any one time. Again, be patient
for its return, more than one search is going on. |
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The
quality of the decision processes used make the difference
between success and continuous difficulties. Contact us to
obtain training or facilitation services. Obtain the benefits
of SAMI and implement the best decision-processes in your
business.
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