BW FAQ - Bioinformatics

-> INFORMATICS

                -> INFO1...quick-search all of the "Bioinformatics World" pages for a certain tool or database ? (last update Mar. 1, 2006)

INFO1...quick-search all of the "Bioinformatics World" pages for a certain tool or database ? (last update Mar. 1, 2006)

    Tip! If you want to directly fetch the main description of a certain resource within the "Bioinformatics World" portal, you may use the page "A-Z", which lists all resources in alphabetical order. Please note that you may also quick-search any page (also the "A-Z" page) which is opened at the moment via the "Find text as you type" functionality of your browser (in case you are using Netscape, of course), which immediately highlights any text that you type within the page.

    If you want to search all (including the FAQ pages) of the "Bioinformatics World" pages for all occurrences of a certain tool or database (or any keyword), you can use the "site-specific" search functions of Yahoo or Google, as included in the "Navigate" section of the main index page. Simply replace the example text with the keyword(s) you are looking for (like specific bioinformatics tools or databases). Note that both search engines only look for the EXACT MATCH of your query term, meaning that e.g. a query "EPrimer" does NOT fetch the hit "EPrimer3" !!! Also note that, in general Yahoo and Google searches show some differences.
    NOTE: Now (2005) Yahoo and Google both search and cache text of up to 500 kb per page, whereas before, the upper limit for Google was 101 kb (meaning that often, only a part of a large page holding a lot of text was scanned). This means that Google now scans webpages up to 512 kb. Pages which are even larger show a file size of "512 kb", meaning that the maximum size was exceeded, and then the "Cached"-version of the page is truncated. Also note that when clicking onto the "Cache" link of a page, a cached version of the page is displayed, highlighting all the occurrences of the search term within the text.
    At Yahoo and Google, there is an "Advanced Search" page providing many options to specify your search. Many of these fields and checkboxes can also be defined in a "command-line-like" version within the "normal" query field. At both sites, you may restrict your search for URLs containing a specific term, which works the same way, just enter the following into the box: inurl:term. In the case of a search restricted to the "Bioinformatics World" pages, you may specify "keyword inurl:mayerh2". As "mayerh2" is a very specific term within URLs, the "Bioinformatics World" pages are exclusively scanned for the defined keyword.
    You may search for a keyword exclusively within one web-site or one domain. Again, at both sites, this works the same way, just enter the following into the box: "keyword site:URL. Example: Searching "Bioinformatics World" for a term like "biomart" would look like this: biomart site:http://homepage.univie.ac.at/herbert.mayer/. Interestingly, at the time of testing, this only worked well when using Google but not when using Yahoo.
    Conclusion: Now (2005) Google is the recommended site to search "Bioinformatics World" for any keywords of interest, as there is no difference concerning cached page size anymore, and especially as Google is updating its index much more frequently than Yahoo (which can be tested by searching for resources which have been added to the portal recently) !