A colleague I work with sent me an interesting link today. As part of a course she must learn the latest and greatest ways to search the web for content. She found out that 80% of the web is not located through traditional search engines.
Wow….do you know what that means is out there?
Well if it’s true, I just googled (I love that’s a verb now) the word “the” and got 5,130,000,000 hits. If that is only 20% of what is out there then there are potentially 25,650,000,000 sites that are really in cyberspace. Okay maybe not exactly, but I’m sure the premise is real. Not everyone knows how to set their site up properly to be found by search engines, so it makes sense that many are hiding.
The site my friend referred me to is called Stumble Upon.
When you set up your account you are given the option of choosing which types of sites you would like to see from about 500 different topics. Some examples of categories are alcoholic drinks, internet tools, astronomy, crafts, physics, iraq, online games, open source, and web development.
A toolbar is installed in your browser that when you click it you are sent to a webpage based on one of the topics you have chosen. The pages are ranked by users (3,727,921) and are delivered to you based on the preferences you have chosen.
It’s a neat little tool if you are looking around for some different content you’ve never seen before, if you love to just websurf, and/or you just want to learn what’s out there.
Obviously it isn’t too new if there are 3.5 million+ users. However, content on the web is always expanding and changing and it’s seems like a good way to see what’s out there and have your say on ranking a few of the sites.
Not only can you “stumble” through websites but also photos, news articles, videos, and a specific topic. I could lose a lot of time playing with this one.
Some neat ones I stumbled onto (for now….):
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Content that isn’t found through search engines is sometimes called the “invisible” or “deep” web. There’s tons of information in online databases and directories that can be very valuable but you won’t find by googling.
One of the courses I’m developing right now is about online resources for primary source materials. The SME works at the Library of Congress archives, so she knows all sorts of great things in the LOC, American Memory project, Smithsonian resources, etc. None of that is stuff you’ll find through traditional search engines.
Seek and Ye Shall Find is a good intro to the 80% of online content that you can’t find through search engines. This is more than just bad SEO–it’s the content that isn’t indexed at all.
I haven’t thought of StumbleUpon as a source for finding invisible web content, but it does make sense. I’ve resisted using it so far not because I don’t think I’ll find interesting content, but because I’m worried I’ll find too much fun stuff. I could see myself getting sucked into looking at cool stuff and procrastinating waaay too easily. I’m sure I’ll break down and try it out eventually though.
That’s great. I’ll pass your info on to my friend.
I think you are absolutely right. It’s a bit of an addicting type of tool in that, I want to keep hitting the button to see…”what comes up next”. I could spend countless time playing with the tool, but that could ultimately be a it’s downfall point.