Tuesday 5 March 2013

EYES Search

Ever wondered  (or even noticed?) what the little search box on the right hand side of this page called 'EYES Search' is for? Read on...

One of the most frustrating things about doing a Google search is the amount of irrelevant or non-academic material which appears in your results. EYES - named because it stands for 'Early Years, Education and Social policy', and also because it looks for things - tries to get around this problem by only searching through almost 100 relevant websites which I've handpicked for the quality and reliability of the information that they provide. It's still using Google software to order the results, but will only show material from the sites I've selected, so in theory should be much more likely to find you something suitable for research purposes.

To test it for yourself, try doing a search for an essay topic in 'normal' Google, then do the same search in EYES and compare the results. See the difference? I don't pretend EYES is perfect, but I'm confident that in most cases it will point you towards useful information that you may not otherwise have found. Further information about the service is available here, and feedback with suggestions for improvements is always welcome - email me at: D.Renfree@ucb.ac.uk


Comparison of Google (on left) vs EYES (on right) search results - click on image for larger version

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