Chapter 12:  Google Search Engine

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I thought I knew how to use Google, but after completing this tutorial, I can now say I know a lot more, and will continue playing with it and learning.  Google is probably the best-known, and most-used search engine on the web today.  This mammoth search engine was created in 1998 by a  group of graduate students at Stanford University. The order of pages it returns in searches is based on the number of sites linking to them and how often they are visited.  This is demonstrative of how popular they are, and thus, how relevant.

Being a search engine, Google searches its own web database, but it also incorporates a subject directory, powered by the Open Directory Project, which you learned

The default Boolean logic term Google defaults to is AND.  (see Lesson 8 for a refresher of what this means.)  The main page supports (+) and (-) signs, double quotes for phrases, and supports Boolean OR for simple search statements.  One of my favorite things about Google is that there are search options on the main page for images, video, news, maps, and a lot more.

The advanced search page in Google supports Boolean searching with "all of the words," "exact phrase," "at least one of the words," and "without the words." The searcher has options to limit their results in all kinds of ways, including field searching, file format, date range, adult content, and pages not filtered by license.  The user can choose how many results are displayed, from 10-100 per page, and there are links to "page specific" pages as well as "topic specific pages."

Some additional options that Google offers are links to cached page archives that show a copy of the page from the last time Google indexed it, clustered, indented links to related pages and identification of sponsored links that are displayed in colored blocks.  There is also an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button that goes directly to top-ranked sites in the search query. 

For my assignment with this lesson I had to conduct several searches. First, I was to search the following terms using the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button: 

After searching using the "I'm feeling Lucky" button, if I wasn't happy with the results (which I wasn't) I was to redo each search using the "Google Search" button.  When I did so for click and clack, Google returned 1,100,000 sites.  "Car Talk" was referenced in almost every top result returned in the search.  I had to go through almost 100 sites before the results started referring to other things besides "Car Talk."  When I searched for colbert, almost 14,000 results came back, some of which were about Stephen Colbert, but there were also many other sites included.  When I searched matrix, the result returned 178,000,000 sites. The top one was the Matrix hair product line, but almost immediately the other sites listed had to do with other things involving the term "matrix."  I guess I'll have to play with this "I'm Feeling Lucky" button some more--I really don't understand why someone would want to use it, instead of seeing a list of sites. 

The second part of the assignment required me to conduct two different searches for the phrase, "to be or not to be."  The first time I was to omit the quotation marks.  When I did, Google returned 2,750,000,000 results. I was then to add them and view the results. When I added the quotation marks, "to be or not to be" returned 1,820,000 results. 

Lesson 1 Search Engines   Lesson 2 Metasearch Engines   Lesson 3  Subdirectories   Lesson 4  Library Gateways  

Lesson 5  Evaluating WebPages   Lesson 6  Creating a Search Strategy   Lesson 7  Basic Search Tips  

Lesson 8  Boolean Logic   Lesson 9  Field Searching   Lesson 10  Troubleshooting Lesson 11  Clusty Search Engine 

     Chapter 12  All Things Google   Lesson 13  All Things Yahoo