Using Del.icio.us as an Elite Search-engine
In The Work Day, Your Digital Office by Skellie
When you want to find the best of anything, Google shouldn’t be your first port of call. SEO is certainly useful for some webmasters and bloggers, but from a searcher’s perspective, it can mean that top results aren’t as good or as relevant as they could be.
If you’re looking for reading material, doing research on a particular topic, or collecting themed links, I’d suggest you use Del.icio.us. Take your topic and think about the keywords people would use to categorize content on that topic, then search for those keywords using the top right-hand searchbar on the main page.
The results represent some of the web’s most popular content on that topic, bookmarked by dozens, hundreds or thousands of del.icio.us users. The links are of a much higher quality and more relevant than those returned by a Google search. It also means that they resonated with a lot of people. Being crowd-tested, it’s more likely they’ll also resonate with you.
A few people have asked how I make resource posts. My strategy is one any blogger could use. Decide which topic you want to provide high-quality resources on and combine your own bookmarks with new content you’ve found through Del.icio.us. It ruthlessly cuts down the time you spend searching and collating links, meaning that the resulting resource list is a lot easier to make than it seems.
February 19th, 2008
Can’t believe that I’ve never used Del.icio.us. When Google first came out, I liked it because it used links (from other sites), among other things, to establish authority. This cuts out the “other things.” Between StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, and Google, knowledge discovery is getting easier and easier every day. Is there anything else I’m missing? Perhaps Digg for timely information, trends, etc.
February 19th, 2008
This was a real eye-opener Skellie. I use Del.icio.us, but would have NEVER thought to use it in the way you suggest. Great write-up! I’ll get this integrated into my workflow right away. Many Thanks!!
This new blog is just AMAZING, Skellie! It’s filled chock-full of dazzling content just like your first blog!!
I’ve been doing keyword research for various niches for an Interactive Learning Environment and I can see I have got some reading to catch up on IN BOTH OF YOUR TOP-NOTCH BLOGS!!!
Have an excellent day, Skellie! Have an even BETTER one tomorrow!
February 19th, 2008
Skellie, that’s a good point.
For topics that could be worth bookmarking you could go an search on there. But for many topics that may not be worth bookmarking, would one find useful information?
If you were the type of person who didn’t necessarily go along with the majority, it may not be as exciting. That’s one of the reasons, I do much use the site.
Just wanted to point out a different opinion.
February 19th, 2008
I never even thought about researching with Delicious. I normally use quotes on Google but have often found that I had to drill down even further.
When time is short this is especially annoying and I’ll implement your tip in my next search episode.
February 19th, 2008
Del.icio.us has a useful search function but it has got nothing on Google when it comes to serious searching.
Delicious can find you pages on particular topics, but that’s all. If you are looking for gadgets blog, maybe delicious will return some top quality gadget pages, but if you have a more specific query like troubleshooting a particular problem in a particular gadget, delicious will find you nothing.
Anyways, I always use delicious to compile my resource lists, and it has never disappointed me in that area.
February 19th, 2008
You can jump directly to things tagged “japan” right in your URL bar, e.g., http://del.icio.us/tag/japan. The nice thing about delicious is the intersection of tags, filtering your searches down to things like http://del.icio.us/tag/japan+anime+tentacles
February 20th, 2008
I never thought of it, but what a great idea, Skellie. I have used Technorati a few times. Do you think Delicious is a better option?
February 20th, 2008
I use the same tactic when looking to make resource posts. Who says you have to unique in a resource post? Just post more information than the others. When I’m looking to make resource posts, I always visit delicious and sometimes other social media sites like Digg, and as you said, it drastically reduces the amount of time spent on research. In fact, you can crank out a research post in as little as 3 hours sometimes…
February 20th, 2008
Skellie,
Which do you feel is more important to a blogger Del.icio.us. or Stumble Upon? Why? What kind of person uses each site?
February 21st, 2008
I tend to agree with Moshin on this one. Sometimes we want to step outside the echo chamber. A quick test of Del.icio.us found it good for broad and general subjects, but if you are looking for background on a specific item (such as what bloggers saying about the expected Teamsters endorsement of Obama), Google’s really the only answer. Google has become like Microsoft: one of those giant companies we can’t stand, but give grudging respect because they do one thing very well. For word processing, nobody does it better than Microsoft’s Word. For deep searches, Google is king.
February 24th, 2008
Or just use 50 Matches.
50 Matches searches through sites like del.icio.us and Digg and returns the best of the best. It’s basically the same thing, but in a more search engine like interface.