Wednesday, August 22, 2018

SearchResearch Challenge (8/22/18): How to find difficult to find web pages? (Part 2)


What makes a page difficult to find?  (Part 2)

As we saw last week, sometimes you remember the page, but have difficulty figuring out the exact words for your query.  In one case, I remembered seeing an article on a topic (the American author disputing a Wikipedia article), but the results were filled with Wikipedia results, which in this case, really didn't help.  So we used the site: operator to exclude those results.  

The other example from last week was to find an article about a black racer snake from the New Jersey government educational site.  There, we had to use the right domain name (site:NJ.gov) and search in that part of the NJ web site with site:NJ.GOV.  

This week, I have two other "difficult to find" problems that I hope you can solve.  These are both a bit more tricky than last week's and require a bit more sophisticated search knowledge, so I hope you're up to the Challenge!  


1.  This happens to me more often that I would like:  Images in my blog (THIS blog!) will sometimes go missing in action.  This happens when a website disappears, leaving my nice link to their image with a gaping hole.  Perhaps you've seen it--the hole looks like this: 

A broken image link leaves behind a hole-in-the-page.  I want to find a replacement image–one that looks the same as this missing image!
Arrgh!  This is frustrating, but an inevitable consequence of having companies go out of business.  This causes link-rot and that makes the target of the link (in this case, the image of a remote-control glider) go missing.  It shows a broken image icon instead.     
How can I find a replacement image for this hole in my blog?  In other words, can you find this missing image?  This hole-in-the-blog comes from the SRS post of December 14, 2011 and shows a particular remote-control glider.  (In fact, it's one that I built back in the late 1990s.)  
The Challenge for skilled SRS-ers is to (a) figure out what that image looked like, and (b) find that image somewhere else on the internet.  Can you? 

A related difficult to find web page relies on a different technique... but it's also a toughie.  Can you answer this dessert-related Challenge?  

2.  A while ago I was having dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Turkish restaurant somewhere in Europe and had a fantastic dessert.  It was rich, creamy, simple and wonderful.  I wrote down the namekaymak–so I could find it again at a place closer to home.  My Challenge was to find a place near me (that is, in Mountain View, California) that sells kaymakCan you find a place in Mountain View, CA that sells this fantastic dessert?  
(Note that I do not want clotted cream, nor do I want to buy it through online purchase, I want real kaymak that I can eat today!!  
For extra credit (and this is the difficult part)--How much does this place in Mountain View sell it for?  



These two Challenges need very different and fairly advanced techniques.  If you can solve both of these, you can rate yourself as a Jedi-level SearchResearcher!  

Please let us know how you solved the Challenges--and be as clear as possible in HOW you did it.  (For these Challenges, you need more than a clever query and the use of site:) 

Search on! 


30 comments:

  1. *cough* http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html *cough*

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    1. Well... Maybe. Turns out that some websites WANT you to link to their images / resources. Why? They want to track the number of times people see their content. In addition, many resources change periodically (e.g., dynamically updated images that reflect new information) so you HAVE to hotlink to the content. I'm not too worried about hotlinks draining the bandwidth from a site. If they want to contact me and request a takedown, that's really easy. (From their logs, it's trivial to figure out where the traffic is coming from.) Once they get here, they can just drop me a message and I'd take the link down. It's worth knowing that I've NEVER received such a request!

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  2. I've only done number 1 so far.

    In Firefox, I right clicked the broken image and clicked "View Image Info" to get the original URL. I put that into the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive and found the original image. I then used that URL to do a reverse image search in Google Images and found this page with the image among others.

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    1. courtesy of CarlSHess… Dan's selection…
      "Take her out and you'll know why so many thousands of modelers have fallen in love with the Gentle Lady."
      Carl Goldberg
      you might also try snow fungus…
      see "Snow Mushroom and Fruit Dessert" blueberries, lemon & kiwi
      yelp - helping with ingredients

      ⌘F kaymak
      more SERP
      archive doesn't always work…
      or the snafu resolves itself…

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    2. just recalled these guys… a different use - Almazan Kitchen - they make delicious videos…
      potato with kaymak
      and happened to be checking this this AM… domestic honey in the Motor City
      D buzz
      there's some open ground

      Delete
  3. The first one is quite simple... the old archive org
    https://web.archive.org/web/20150926085113/http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2011/12/seeing-gestalt-finding-key-term.html

    The second one:
    Search google [menu "kaymak" mountain view ca] looking for a delivery service who delivers kaymak... goti it:
    https://www.doordash.com/store/olympus-mountain-view-266/
    From its menu Kaymak & Bal $8.95 "Turkish creamy dairy product, homemade special cheese, served w/ honey & Turkish pita bread." OK, they got Kaymak!
    From the DoorDash customer (the bakery) got the name Olympus Caffe & Bakery
    Search for [Olympus Caffe & Bakery mountain view ca] and got its web page and menu http://www.cafeolympus.com/menu.php
    Into KAHVALTI section you got: KAYMAK & BAL $4.50 Turkish creamery dairy product, similar to clotted cheese. Served w/ honey & pita
    They are at 135 Castro Street, Mountain View, CA, 94041 open Mon – Sun 7am to 10pm and accept all major credit cards!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The "search for a delivery service" is a clever trick. Nice.

      But I'm curious how you knew to open the Kahvalti section? Did you just click on everything until you found it?

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  4. The second one seems a bit too easy. The first result of my first query [kaymak mountain view] was the yelp page for Olympus Caffe & Bakery. Clicked the link for the menu, did ctrl-f for kaymak, and it seems to be there in plain view. And it says it costs $8.95.

    I think this meets all the requirements? Maybe you've generated enough interest in this to increase their search visibility lol?

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  5. Replies
    1. Hmmm. I thought it was Georgia 12. If that's not working for you, try doing a CMD+ to enlarge the font.

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  6. 1. This happens to me more often that I would like: Images in my blog (THIS blog!) will sometimes go missing in action. The Challenge for skilled SRS-ers is to (a) figure out what that image looked like, and (b) find that image somewhere else on the internet. Can you?

    I went first to the Challenge http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2011/12/seeing-gestalt-finding-key-term.html

    Remembering the Search Lesson you shared : Excellent research tool -- the Wayback Machine browser extension
    Hate 404 errors?


    Went to Wayback Machine. In there I inserted the url of the Challenge and explored the captures made for this url, as the site mentions.

    The Challenge with the Image. Captured on January 23, 2012

    Image that got lost With this URL, Searched by Image and found the image on other site:

    Carl Goldberg Gentle Lady 2M Glider (kit-to-Build)

    Now, I am wondering if there is another way to find the missing image. For example, if Wayback Machine doesn’t have it or something similar. I’ll think and work with that but at the moment, nothing comes to mind.

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  7. For my previous post question, I searched: [how to find missing images on blogs online]

    5 Tools To Check For Broken Links On Your Some we need to download software, so I didn't. Others worked on Wordpress, so, I skipped and finally, tried the others

    Didn't understand how Google Webmaster Tools works so, I need to check that lately

    With W3C Link Checker, inserted the URL of the Challenge and found after checking, that on list of redirects, says: "The links below are not broken, but the document does not use the exact URL, and the links were redirected. It may be a good idea to link to the final location, for the sake of speed." And continues, " http://www...airplanes/gpma0960_01_bg.jpg, redirects to ... other link. I truncated the address because it links to apps not related to the Challenge and doesn't show the previous image. However, took the final piece of the url (gpma0960_01_bg.jpg) and searched for that and found our missing image.

    Not sure this works always, plus, going to those new redirected links sometimes, like this can be a surprise. So, I prefer much more Wayback Machine

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    Replies
    1. Technically, you're right -- this is a 500 error (redirect issue). But the result is the same. And your method often works!

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  8. Both of these were easy - the first took 1 minute. I took the original page date and searched on archive.org for http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/ - taking the archived page nearest to Dec 2011. (23rd Jan 2012). The image is still there - a pretty pink (mostly) and yellow glider with a large wingspan. A reverse image search gives a few other sites with the same glider - e.g. https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/Great-Planes-Goldberg-Gentle-Lady-RC-Glider-Self-Assembly-Kit-Gpma0960/1151413972?iid=263398910062 - costing GBP74.99. (The original page was at http://www.carlgoldbergproducts.com/airplanes/gpma0960_01_bg.jpg - now gone!)

    The second one was a bit tougher but not much. A search for <"mountain view" california "turkish restaurant"> brings up 3 restaurants - Ephesus, Cafe Baklava and the Olympus Cafe. Adding in the word "Kaymak" refines the 3 to the Olympus Cafe with the first Chowhound link at "https://www.chowhound.com/post/seeking-kaymak-916098 stating "Olympus cafe in mountain view has kaymak!!!!!! It is fantastic, although I have never had the authentic stuff. However compared to clotted cream and just trusting my own taste buds, I was in love."

    So quick look at the Olympus Cafe menu gives Kaymak and Bal at $4.50. (Can also do kaymak site:cafeolympus.com - so don't even need to search the actual menu - it's in the Turkish breakfast section!)

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  9. These are great quizzes. This one was way too easy. Just clicked on your link then right=clicked and chose WayBack Machine then first version and there, taadaa, is your red/pink and yellow glider. jon

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    1. Yup! It's not too easy, you're just too skilled!

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  10. Nothing new to add except that at first I forgot to switch to the US Google page on the second challenge so my first search came up with a bunch of places in Sydney to buy kaymak, so I know what I'm going to be getting next time I'm near one of them. Thanks for enabling!

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  11. 1. Typed blogpost url into Wayback machine. Voila. Pinkish glider with yellow stripes. Image there too (https://web.archive.org/web/20120123210219/http://searchresearch1.blogspot.com/2011/12/seeing-gestalt-finding-key-term.html)
    2. Searched for Turkish restaurant mountain view ca serving Kaymak. Brought up Olympus Caffe on Castro street within Yelp. Clicked on menus. Voila. $8.95 Kaymak & Bal.

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  12. Good Morning!

    For the kaymak dessert in Mountain View, had luck while searching.

    Searched [kaymak mountain view] on Twitter, trying to find tweets in the zone. Just found one result.

    Olympus Turkish cafe: Bal kaymak checked and read she is Turkish.

    So then searched [Olympus cafe Mountain View] to find the cafe and then [bal kaymak site:cafeolympus.com/

    Result says cost is 4.50. Then checked [difference bal kaymak kaymak]

    Bal Kaymak (Honey Kaymak) Therefore Bal is honey and the dessert name is Bal Kaymak

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    1. Tried to find another restaurant or different way to find the Kaymak. I am looking forward to read Dr. Russell's answer. I think I missing something to find more answers that can also be used to other dishes. In my queries, just found same restaurant with different prices in range 4.95 to 8.95

      About food and surprises, just learned that fortune cookies were created by Japan and then China due to war, modified and created the ones we know today. And that the only factory in the world that makes them manually is in San Francisco.

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  13. searching - am curious — why the no-show on my initial comment?

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    1. Looks like it was a mis-click on my part. Editor error! Do you see your original comment post now?

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    2. Thanks Dan, see it now… after it failed to show up the 2nd time, I started to wonder if there was a problem… but I was just jonesing for some clafoutis - cherry.

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  14. I assumed that you wanted the real deal--kaymak made with water buffalo milk. After a lot of clicking I think there is none in your country that use water buffalo milk. Not even in MV. But I also noted that its made in lots places with whatever milk is available.
    So, I can get water buffalo [the river WB variety] milk from a big herd nearby. I don't see anyway I could make and get it to you.

    I wonder if the stuff found at restaurants is what you would settle for?

    Cheers jon

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  15. life saver… "One day he strapped two large plastic jugs full of milk in front of each knee on his motorcycle to deliver throughout Istanbul. A van ran a red light and Özsüt smashed into the side of it in the middle of an intersection. The milk jugs absorbed the shock and he walked away unscathed. Buffalo milk not only provides Özsüt’s livelihood, but actually saved his life."
    Özsüt

    under any of the following guises: kajmak, kaimak, geymar, gaimar, kaylgmak, qaymaq, qaymoq, qhaymaqh, or sarshir."

    Turkish honey?
    pine honey - Turkish: çam balı

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  16. kaymak available for $8.95 at Olympus Cafe and Bakery in Mt. View, CA
    https://www.grubhub.com/restaurant/olympus-cafe-and-bakery-135-castro-st-mountain-view/327474?affiliate=1073&utm_source=facebook-affiliate-network&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=1073&utm_content=327474&instant_experiences_enabled=true

    ReplyDelete