How do I … improve search results within Wikipedia?

Wikipedia.com is altogether helpful, up to a point.

(Recent data from Compete.com says Wikipedia is among the 1,500 most-visited sites on the Web. Compete also measured average visits and said the average time spent per visit to Wikipedia is 24 minutes.)

The good and the bad side of Wikipedia is its open-editing structure. Anyone can add entries; anyone can edit them.

As a result, the Wikipedia search engine is a bit anemic.

For better results, go to www.wikiseek.com. WikiSeek produces better Wikipedia results and lets you further refine searches. It focuses only on Wikipedia pages and on sites that link to Wikipedia entries (which keeps you away from bogus results or spam blogs).

The search results also include a tag cloud showing Wikipedia categories containing the search term. Results can be quickly filtered by clicking on one of those categories.

Try it out with the search term “women’s figure skating.” You get a tag cloud that includes 10 categories, ranging from 2004 Summer Olympics (don’t know why that one shows up) all the way down to Winter Olympic events.

The list includes non-Wikipedia entries from other sites; you can tell which are which since the Wikipedia links are preceded by a tiny capital W.

Very handy if you want to compare Wikipedia entries with other sites.

How Do I? is a regular feature of .TXT.