Data Searches

When I am looking for data that rarely changes, I typically use the mighty Google. It’s really great, and with all the search operators and functions built into Google search it’s relatively easy to really dig in and find hard-to-find information.

Breaking News and Time Sensitive Searches

When I am looking for information on a current event or breaking news typically Google doesn’t cut it.

To Google’s credit, blog posts about time sensitive information do bubble up to the top fairly regularly, and Google does a good job of detecting when a search query is about a time sensitive event and displays the latest Google News articles at the top of the search results.

But that still doesn’t do it for me. Instead I consistently rely on Google Blog Search for the latest information. Even if it is from a less than reliable blogger, there are often links to other timely articles within their blog posts so I can click through and find the latest reliable information.

Twitter Search is also a great place to find breaking news, but I’m sure this isn’t news to most. Admittedly, Twitter isn’t always easily reliable. Spammers have figured out how to use the hash tags to spam Twitter feeds. And when the Twitter spam is coupled with URL shorteners it can be a bit precarious clicking through the results. So sometimes it takes a bit of time to weed through the crap, but more often than not, you can find what you need using Twitter search.

Search Tools That Combine The Best of Both Worlds

MIT’s Technology Review has an article today covering a site that is launching later this week called Wowd:

According to CEO Mark Drummond, Wowd is trying to strike a balance between the up-to-date but chaotic results produced by a site like Twitter and the slower-to-change results that come from traditional search engines such as Google. He expects Wowd to be particularly valuable to users who want to know what content is currently popular, and who see search as an additional feature.

It will be interesting to see if Wowd can pull all these disparate search tools together into one useful tool, a central hub for breaking information and rarely changed legacy data.

If it works, I know it’s something I will use religiously.

I’m curious. How do YOU stay abreast of breaking news and information online?