Search overview
I used the following search tools in preparing this report.

• google (search engine)
• alta vista (search engine)
• ixquick (metasearch engine)
• searchedu (subject specific database)

Google was selected because it is the biggest search engine on the Internet. It’s Advanced Search facility had a number of fields to filter down search criteria. Some of these fields were quite useful such as occurrences which offered the opportunity to search for the keywords in the title, text, url or links as opposed to just anywhere on the page. However, I felt there were a couple of slightly disappointing features that could be improved. One was the limited options on the date field. Here the only options that existed were 3 months, 6 months, past year or anytime. A facility to enter a customized date range would have assisted my search. The other feature that I thought could be improved was the facility to search pages within Australia as opposed to the World. This option is given under the basic search screen on www.google.com.au however, the advanced search screen under www.google.com and www.google.com.au do not provide this option. I was able to work around it by entering +australia as a keyword, as well as specifying .au in the domain filter, nevertheless I thought it was an inconsistency and a facility that if provided on a basic search screen should surely be carried through to the Advanced Search screen.

Alta Vista was selected because it is also a large Search Engine. I thought it was important to use two large, yet different, Search Engines to ensure that a wide variety of hits were obtained. Alta Vista didn’t offer the option to search Australian Web Pages, however, as with Google’s Advanced Search screen, I was able to enter +australia as a keyword and .au in the domain filter to ensure I was getting a search on local pages. I was also impressed that Alta Vista offered the option to search by both timeframe and date range, something Google was light on for.

Ixquick was selected as I thought it would be good to have a Metasearch tool in there and see what kind of options it had and what hits it threw up. As it doesn’t search either Alta Vista or Google it offered to cast an even wider net of search results. However, I was disappointed that it didn’t have an Advanced Search screen. Instead it had a Power Search screen which was really just a help screen. No extra filters were available.

Searchedu was selected as a Subject Specific Database. However, what I didn’t realize at the time that I decided to use this Search facility was that it used Google to search, so in some cases I was repeating earlier searches. However, as I learnt how it filtered out all non .edu domain sites, I used this knowledge to restrict my searches with this tool to .com.au, .edu.au and .gov.au domain sites.

GOOGLE

1ST SEARCH (196,000 HITS) Click here to see results page
My search on Google initially was for the keywords:
Spam impact on marketing
and drew 196,000 hits.

2ND SEARCH (3,730 HITS) Click here to see results page
I then conducted this search on Australian sites and received an approximate 98% reduction in hits to 3,730.

3RD SEARCH (554 HITS) Click here to see results page
After reading the Advanced search tips, my search strategy then altered slightly to a priority inclusion/exclusion format:
+marketing +spam +impact +articles –anti

4TH SEARCH (0 HITS) Click here to see results page
As my goal was to get the number of hits down to under 100, I then began searching for my keywords “in the title”, as opposed to “anywhere in the document”. This seemed to refine my search too harshly as I received 0 hits.

5TH SEARCH (29 HITS) Click here to see results page
I then revised my search strategy. I figured that searching on the document title only could possibly cut down the number of hits significantly. To avoid getting a 0 hit return, I dropped the keywords +article and +impact out of the search. This brought about the desired result with 29 hits returned. There were 4 high quality articles returned in this search from the following sites:

• www.shipyard.com.au
• www.ezine-writer.com.au
• www.wcr-internet-marketing.com.au
• www.zdnet.com.au

6TH SEARCH (2 HITS) Click here to see results page
One of my first searches was for the phrase: "spam impact on marketing" This search was on the whole of the World Wide Web and returned just 2 results. Both results were identical and referred to a forum on the Builder.com.com site. As I was specifically after Australian related articles and information, I later discarded this information.

ALTA VISTA

1ST SEARCH (32,912 HITS) Click here to see results page
The following keywords were entered: +australia +marketing +spam –anti The quality of these hits was fairly poor, so further searches were undertaken.

2ND SEARCH (7,087 HITS) Click here to see results page
The keyword +articles was added, which reduced the number of hits, by about 75%. However, 7,000 hits was still way above an optimum number of quality hits so further refinements were made.

3RD SEARCH (1,206 HITS) Click here to see results page
A further keyword +impact was added and the search was restricted to items within the past 6 months. This reduced the number of hits by around 85% to just over 1,200. At this point I decided to keep experimenting with the date field to get fewer but better quality hits.

4TH SEARCH (1,075 HITS) Click here to see results page
When the date was shifted in to 3 months, the number of hits only dropped slightly. I realized at this point that I was going to have to fine-tune my search using a different filter in order to get the number of hits under 100.

5TH SEARCH (355 HITS) Click here to see results page
My next strategy was to search on just the .edu, .gov and .com domains, as I figured that the type of information I was seeking would likely be a business, media, government or educational document.

6TH SEARCH (1 HIT) Click here to see results page
I took the keywords +spam +impact out of the search and put them in the exact phrase filter as “spam’s impact”. This cut down my number of hits to 1. The hit I did obtain was an article from PC World (April 2004). The article whilst looking at the impact of Spam legislation in the US as opposed to Australia, nevertheless gave a good background on this topic.

7TH SEARCH (2 HITS) Click here to see results page
Fearing this may have been a bit of a harsh reduction I withdrew the +article keyword, however, this alternation to my search yielded just one more hit.

IXQUICK

SEARCHEDU