Search Tips: Sunrise and Sunset in Google

The Lifehacker Google School has a lovely post on using Google to find the sunrise and sunset of any particular location.

To find a sunrise time, just query:

sunrise cityname  (replace cityname with your city's name, of course), 

I'll let you figure out what to query to find sunset times.

Of course, data like this is the kind of thing that WolframAlpha does like it ain't no thing at all.

Search Quest #1: Find me a good copy of the full works of William Shakespeare

Welcome to the first in our "Search Quest" Series.  In these activities, we will ask you to find us something specific and then you will find it.  Bonus points for creativity, elegance and demonstrating a clear understanding of how to search the internet.

The rules are simple:

1. We post a topic to find.
2. You search for it.
3. You post what you have found AND how you found it as a comment to the original post.  Specifically, what search engine or internet tool you used, what your query was and how effective you think you were in this task.  Obviously, you'll want to include any useful URL's
4. To the winner go the spoils (what those spoils are, we aren't quite sure just yet--any suggestions?)

Got it?  Good.  If not, maybe you want to go spend some time in our Search School Learning Center.  Here's your first Search Quest Topic:

Search Quest #1:  The Full Works of William Shakespeare

Might as well start off with a classic.  We love books around here.  Luckily for us, there are a lot of books that are freely, legally available on the internet for anyone to view.  These books are in what is referred to as the "public domain".  Essentially, every book written before 1925 (or so) is out of copyright and available for free.

Which brings us to our Search Quest.  See if you can find a copy of the complete works of William Shakespeare (you might have heard of him).  Bonus points if you can find a copy that has the following qualities:

1. The copy has annotations (notes and references from Shakespeare experts about what is being said).
2. The copy is a .pdf file. (.pdf files are a pretty common way to share documents on the internet).
3. The copy has a hyperlinked table of contents (this makes it easy to navigate around the many hundreds of thousands of pages of text).

There you have it.  Good luck.  And don't forget to include your favorite Shakespeare work in your comment!

Search News: Search Shenanigans

Here's an interesting article about how Microsoft might be cheating the system to boost the market share of  Bing/Yahoo in the comScore search engine statistics.

As you know, search engines are a business and the more popular your engine is (or seems to be), the more people will want to advertise their products on it and the more money you can make.

It's all somewhat complicated, but it seems that Microsoft might be using various strategies to boost their ratings according to the way that comScore measures these sorts of things.  Apparently, the comScore folks are on to them and are going to adjust their measuring methods accordingly.

What do you think about all of this?  Did you ever think that search engines were so important that companies might try to inflate their own engine's importance?

Hello and Welcome!

Hi There!

Welcome to "The Searcher", the Search School Blog.  Here is where you will find:

• News and Updates about Search School.
• News and Updates about searching the web and how to get better at it.
• Various interactive activities and search challenges to stimulate your mind and improve your search-fu.

So glad that you are here.  You can always contact us through email and by posting comments to any items you find on "The Searcher".

Enjoy!