untangling_the_web

DID: 4046925
UNCLASSIFIEDhTOR OFFl6h'cL I:JSE m.bY
Tip 17: Try Alternative Spellings. Especially of Non-English Names
or Terms. or Even Purposeful Misspellings
This hint especially applies to searching for non-English websites. For example, the
Arabic word khalifah (usually written as Caliph in English) generally refers to the
person who is the successor to Muhammed for leadership of the Islamic community,
This term is transliterated as kalifa, kalifah, califah, or some other variant. However,'
there is a related term khilafah, which is the office itself, i.e., Caliphate in English.
This term is often associated with some of the most radical Islamic websites. I found
I had to search on many variations of these terms or I would have missed a number
of important sites. Even though many of the websites are in Arabic, the addresses
for the sites are still written in the Latin alphabet, and searching for these key words
using syntax as inuti: site: domain: revealed many useful links.
The same is true for commonly misspelled words, e.g., http referrer is usually
misspelled http referer and genealogy is often misspelled genealogy. A wildcard
makes it possible to find both correctly and incorrectly spelled terms.
As you can see from the following example, a search on ["ministry of foregin affairs
islamic republic of iran"] elicits 918 hits while a search with foreign spelled correctly
returned only 38 results.
Web
Did )IOUrnean: "ministryof foreign affairs of islamic republicof Iran"
Ministry of Foregin Affairs of Islamic Republic of Iran
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