Chapter 6 detailed the inundation of information that resulted from our initial HotBot search efforts to find information on hog butchering. What I found was always enlightening and often quite amusing, but led to hours of distraction trying to sort through to find the answer to my specific need to learn how to dress, cure, and prepare a feral hog for storage and, ultimately, food preparation.

All told, our initial search using "hog butchering" retrieved nearly 500 "hits" - which would have taken days to fully explore. I was glad, in retrospect, that I had not been successful in my hog hunting expedition. Had caring for the carcass had to wait until I found the information I needed, the Department of Sanitation would have been at my door inquiring as to the source of the odor coming from my apartment, whilst the meat was, well, you know.....

While some of you out there may have the kind of leisure time to massage your mouse looking from site to site until, at some point, the exact information is finally revealed, most of us simply don't have the luxury of that much "free" time.

It was apparent that I had to do something to "narrow the field", so to speak.

There were a number of options available to me. I could,

The.first challenge was to redefine my HotBot search to eliminate, as much as possible, the many "junk" sites and related but non-helpful sites that had cropped up in the first set of results.

Various options for redefinition were tried, with mixed results that left me feeling like Goldilocks sampling the bears' porridge:

"home hog butchering" - "fewer than 500" citations - virtually identical to the original search

(This bowl of porridge is TOO BIG!)

"feral hog butchering" - 9 citations, lots of anti-cruelty statements, no help

(This bowl of porridge is TOO SMALL!)

"hog butchering instructions" - 26 citations

(This bowl of porridge is JUST RIGHT!)

And sure enough, in searching through the 26 citations, I found exactly what I had been looking for:

Stefan's Florilegium: Overview of butchering livestock and cattle

Within the opened site was a detailed and helpful explanation of the butchering process, as related by several contributors in the form of an initial posting and several follow-up comments by other readers, all of whom offered helpful additions.

My search had at last been rewarded! Unfortunately, it took the better part of a day to get where I had wanted to be.

In retrospect, I should have narrowed the search by redefining AS SOON AS I saw that my initial search contained an unmanageable number of entries.

Intrigued by my ultimate, if time-consuming, success, I decided to pursue the search process to see if other search engines might provide a more expedient trail to the same end result.

I successively loaded the other search engines from their convenient links on the STMUG website (with exception of those search engines which, from their descriptions, were non-relevant to the task at hand, e.g., engines limited to software search, dictionaries and the like) and entered the same search parameters I had used (ultimately) successfully with HotBot:

In the hope that the results I obtained are of interest to prospective users, I include the results and a commentary on the various search engines I tried. For the user with limited time and desire to wade through this section, I will summarize by saying that I concur with the Webmaster's evaluation that HotBot is "Simply the best search engine" - AT LEAST for this type of Topical Search.

As could be expected from the STMUG description, Dogpile did not perform a search of web resources of itself, rather, it checked a variety of other search engines and reported the results, with an initial display of 10 of the successful hits and convenient links directly to the other engines with which the reader can review all of the hits obtained with each engine.

This user found the size of the accompanying banner ads a bit distracting, but the links to the "second tier" of search engines were helpful. OF SPECIAL NOTE, at the end of the first-displayed results in Dogpile was an insightful box that boldly asked me:

Are you looking for "How to Butcher Hog"?

 

My Word! Am I looking for "How To Butcher Hog?" How did they know that? They must be psychic! This is better than Psychic Hotline and a whole lot cheaper!

Regretably, clicking on this psychically-inspired topic yielded hits that ran the gamut from Chicago tourism promos to (I'm not kidding here) the music of Olivia Newton-John - and nothing related to How To Butcher Hog. Go figure. Maybe this is why they called it "Dogpile"?????

To its credit, the Dogpile search "hog butchering instructions" did, in fact, find the sought-for document 'Stefan's Florilegium as the number 6 result in GoTo.com, but yielded results from other engines that varied from "0 Documents" in Yahoo to "1,828,148 Documents" (This is NOT a misprint) in AltaVista. We are obviously lacking in selectivity here.....

We searched a variety of DogPile links in vain for instructions or assistance in doing a refined search, but apparently DogPile couldn't find enough space among the banner ads to include this information.....

Clicking on the link "Netscape Internet Directory" in STMUG led to the loading of "excite.com" which, upon instruction to search for "hog butchering," amassed several hundred entries, each assigned (and listed in decreasing order of) a percentile ranking (of unknown and undefined basis). On the positive side, an option was available for selection which listed only the title of the found document, rather than a summary. This permitted 20 entries to be listed per page, rather than the normal 10, making review faster but with the possibility of missing a document of interest, where "untitled" was listed (unless one opens each untitled document).

A big negative on this search engine is that the total number of results is never revealed to the searcher - I reviewed the first 360 listings (percentile rankings from 63% down to 48%, found no information of use, but dozens of Harley Owners' Group sites (H.O.G., get it?)

On the positive side, each page of results has a box at the bottom that enables the user to refine the search without clicking back to page 1 (or reloading and starting over), and the refined search "hog butchering instructions" did filter out most, but not all, of the Harley Davidson sites, although it is not clear whether this is due to effectiveness of the search engine or the impossibility of telling a Harley owner ANYTHING!

The search in YAHOO for "hog butchering" yielded 386 matches. (At last, a search engine that prominently displayed a precise count!)

The prominent page changer at the bottom of each page of 20 (yes, 20!) matches (with summaries) made scanning quick and efficient.

Next 20 Matches

 

A window at the bottom of each page after page 1 of the results is provided for search refinement, however, the entries are neither numbered nor ranked, making it difficult to refer back to a previously-scanned entry. I scanned the first 100 entries without finding a single motorcycle but there was no shortage of other, apparently trash (i.e. totally unrelated) matches, including one notable match for tracing one's family tree.

Family Tree Makers Geneology Site: Court Records -- Finding Your Ancestors

 

I could take offense at that! We're talking "HOGS" here! What are you trying to imply about my grandmother???

The refined search "hog butchering instructions" narrowed the field to 49 matches, one of which was the sought-after entry for Stefan's Florilegium!

All in all, a pretty good way to search for this kind of information.

The initial search "hog butchering" yielded 94, 595 matches (Yea! Another engine that lets the user know how many weeks it will take to review the results!) Each match is numbered for reference, each page has a box at the bottom that permits search refinement, but going back to previous pages for a second look is a page-by-page effort.

A BIG PLUS for this engine is that the keyword in the title or summary that generated the match is highlighted, if and when the keyword is included in same. This speeds the review process considerably.

Obviously, with 94000+ matches, a lot of extaneous findings were included.

The "refined" search for "hog butchering instructions" yielded (HOLY COW!) 2,355,619 matches!

I clicked on the handy "how to search" instructional link for the site and learned that by using the plus sign (+) between the keywords should result in listing of ONLY those matches which contained ALL three of the keywords.

I restyled my search as "+hog +butchering" (be sure to include the space before the plus sign) and the result was a much more limited 220 matches. The refined results included a significant number of matches with no apparent relationship to the search keywords, and also managed to EXCLUDE Stefan's Floriegium, which had been included in the initial set of results! We also noted that although the search result promised 220 matches, only 180 were included in the successive pages.

The tutorial to help in effective searching was readily visible on the page but required a bit of study to understand.

An interesting result in that the matches are grouped categorically. The search for "hog butchering" yielded:

"Web Sites" - 105 matches (the first 10 are displayed, in numerical order)

"News Articles" - 4 matches (three displayed)

None of the matches included the elusive Stephan's Florilegium, but there were a number of interesting related articles including one medical article on a trichinosis outbreak in Alaska that made Buckebohlz rethink whether he would ever again consume pork!

The refined search "hog butchering instructions" yielded only 6 web site matches, none of which bore significant resemblance to the subject of our search.

IN CONCLUSION, Buckebohlz found this experiment enlightening and enriching, and a considerable strain on the eyes.

The amount of information that is out there is absolutely incredible, and search engines, properly selected and directed, will help you find it.

Good luck in searching!

Buck

Just for the record, AppleAngel's personal favorite search engine is Google.
It searches all the other engines and still manages to come back with intelligible information.