Technical document search engine
Throughout our professional careers as architects, engineers, urban planners, etc. We will have to search the Internet for documentation (books, PDF, presentations, etc.) to carry out work or simply as a query.
The results obtained on the Internet for certain searches do not always provide us with the information we want, and, to be honest, we can spend a few hours looking at pages where we will not get anywhere or full of "spam" (See article how to find architecture books ).
The other day, speaking with a computer colleague, he told us that Google allows you to create a personalized search engine to obtain better quality information if you know some programming. We immediately thought we needed a search engine specialized in the sector of architecture, works, engineering, urban design, etc. but that you will only provide us with documentation.
To understand the free tool that we have created and that exclusively provides documentation, we can see the following image:
From here we start working to create a tool in search engine format that first, it was totally free, and, secondly, that it will only provide us documentation related to architecture, engineering, works, etc.
What is the custom documentation search engine like?
Actually, it works similar to the typical Google search engine where we will introduce an "X" term and it will give us a series of results. So that we understand it schematically we have created the following infographic:
The tool works with any language. Once a term is entered, the Results can be filtered by document type (PDF, Word, Excel, etc) and by relevance or by date that has been entered on the Internet.
What documentation will we find in the tool?
First of all, we must understand that the search engine filters the information that we find on the Internet when we search for an "X" term in the Google search engine.
Although there are hundreds of different files that label documents. We have debugged the most common ones that we all use, type files: .txt, .csv, .pdf, .ppt, .ppx, .pptx, .xls, .xml, .xlsx, .xltm, .doc, .docm, .docx.
In addition, we have included two web portals that host millions of documents on their servers, the ISSUU platform and Slideshare, with the peculiarity that they are free to access and we do not need to register to see all the documentation. In the tool we will see several tabs and they are:
- All tab. All documents are listed here, but they are not debugged by file type.
- PDF tab. Only documents tagged as PDF will appear here
- DOC (Word) tab. Only Microsoft Word documents will appear where we have included with the extensions; .doc, .docm, .docx.
- Tab Excel. Only Microsoft Excel documents will appear where we have included with the extensions; .xls, .xml, .xlsx, .xltm.
- Presentations tab. Only documents that are presentations in Power Point format will appear where we have included with the extensions; .ppt, .ppx, .pptx.
- ISSUU tab. Only documents hosted on the issuu.com platform will appear here (On this platform there are all kinds of documentation; from presentations to complete books, for example)
- Slideshare tab. Only documents hosted on the slideshare.net platform will appear here (On this platform there are all kinds of documentation; from presentations to complete books, for example). Keep in mind that this website belongs to LinkedIn and that most of the documents that are uploaded to this platform will appear on Slideshare.
We remember that in this article we saw how to find doctoral theses on any field and from organizations or universities worldwide.
How many documents do we find when doing a search in the tool?
Although it will obviously depend on the search term or phrase, the information hosted on Google's servers and the type of file, you have to understand something.
With the tool, you can find 1,200 Documents on a specific search term
We have to consider that, for it to be a free search engine, we do not use what is called the "Google API" or the Google Academic because of its restrictions. But, for each search term we will have 10 pages with 20 results that will be individual for each category (There are 6 categories). So the Maximum of documents for a term will be 200 Documents per category, which, if we look and multiply by the individual categories, we would have in total 1,200 documents to be consulted by search term Crazy!
What must be taken into account in the search engine?
When this search engine is created within the Google platform, we indicate keywords to the search engine. Keywords describe the content or topic of the search engine and are used to fine-tune the results on specific topics.
We have included many terms related to the subject of construction, architecture, works, engineering, industrial issues, design or urban planning issues.. To give an example, just for the term architecture and its related topics:
Although in the search engine you can practice searches not related to the topics indicated above, in reality, the tool is not prepared to offer quality information in other common sectors.
Another issue that we must understand are the results with the files referring to the tabs - categories of: DOC (Word), Excel and Presentations (Power Point).
By the type of files they are (.doc, .docm, .docx, .xls, .xml, .xlsx, .xltm, .ppt, .ppx, .pptx) and how it behaves when uploading them to a website, in the 80% of the cases are and produce direct downloads when clicking on the result (This also happens with a normal Google search), unlike PDF (which are hosted on websites and we will see them from the website where it is hosted).
We also have to comment that for the Excel and Presentations (Power Point) categories we will not always find as many results as in the other tabs.
Where can I access the custom search tool?
You can find it from the specific document search tool from HERE. We will soon add it to the HOME of the OVACEN portal to make it more accessible to everyone.
With this tool we are not inventing anything new, but we believe that it can be very useful for those people who want to filter documents in a suitable way and find valid documentation without spending too much time "diving" on the Internet.
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