Electronic Commerce EBusiness

1
Electronic Commerce / E-Business

• Using Library Databases
• and Internet Resources

2
Top 10 Reasons Google is not God

• 10. No one ever sings "Google Save the Queen"
• 9. Results from God depend less on your spelling
  ability
• 8. God's images are in 3-D
• 7. God has no "sponsored links
• 6. God doesn't cache anything
• 5. God couldn't care less about keywords
• 4. Google does make it easier to find Heaven,
  but that won't help you get in
• 3. God felt no need to install a "safe search"
  filter
• 2. There is no "I'm feeling lucky" feature with
  God
• 1. God cannot be bought
• From Ned Fielden, Instructional Librarian, San
  Francisco State University

3
Agenda for This Session

• Internet Myths
• Internet Sites for Electronic Commerce
• Library Resources

4
Internet Myths

• All of the information you need is on the
  Internet.
• Most information on the Internet can be found by
  using a search engine, e.g. Google.
• Search engines are designed primarily to help you
  find information
• All of the information on the Internet is
  reliable, current, and complete.

5
Search Engines and the WebGot it covered?

• The biggest search engines each index between 2
  billion and 4.2 billion pages
• No search engine covers more than a small subset
  of the Web.

6
This is Deep!

• Public information on the deep Web is currently
  400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined
  World Wide Web.
• The deep Web contains 7,500 terabytes of
  information, compared to 19 terabytes of
  information in the surface Web.
• The deep Web contains nearly 550 billion
  individual documents.
• Source Bright Planet http//www.brightplanet.com
  /deepcontent/deep_web_faq.aspDeepWebSize

7
(Re)search engines?

• Search engines are good at finding a data point
• Search engines are clueless about whether a
  particular page is
• of high quality
• suitable for a research purpose

8
Overlap among Search Engines

• Tests have shown surprisingly little overlap
  among the leading search engines
• As many as 50 percent of pages in a results set
  were found in only ONE of the 10 leading SEs
• As many as 70 percent were found in only TWO
  search engines
• Source for this and other statistics cited above
  Search Engine Showdown (www.searchengineshowdown.
  com)
• SearchEngineWatch.com

9
Its all about the ads

• All search engines embed ads in main results
• except for Google (but just wait)
• Actual ad infiltration varies
• depending on search engine
• depending on search words

10
A Self-Perpetuating Cycle

• Sites with ads will get
• more page views
• more links
• higher page rankings
• Quality of search engine results will decline

11
Is this a recipe for successful research?

• Take one relatively dumb technology (search
  algorithms)
• Fold in a huge pile of randomly selected,
  unorganized content
• Add billions of keyword-matched ads
• AND STIR!!

12
Search Engine Tips

• Be specific
• Use more than one keyword
• Use exact phrases in quotes
• Search for ALL of the words, not just ANY of the
  words.
• Use help screens in search engines.
• Tutorials

13
Metasites for E-Commerce

• A Business Researchers Interests (brint.com)
• Internet.com Guide to Electronic Commerce
  (ecommerce.internet.com)

14
Where to Begin?

• With library resources, not the public Web
• With Web sources (if you must), its often best
  to find a good metasite and go from there
• For more, see the tutorials and guides at
  www.lib.depaul.edu/research/searchengines.htm

15
Citation Guides for the Internet

• See the tutorials and guides at
  www.lib.depaul.edu/research/searchengines.htm

16
Library Resources

• ABI / Inform
• Books 24x7
• Business and Industry
• EBSCO Host (Bus. Source Elite)
• Access from the DePaul Libraries home page
  (www.lib.depaul.edu) by clicking on Databases.