Chapter 3
Aladdin’s Cave
Abstract
This chapter explores the power of Internet search engines for academic work and focuses specifically on Google, since this is often people's first port of call when confronted with a problem, query, or academic task. This chapter shows you how to adopt a clever, strategic approach to your searching so that you can ensure the items you retrieve from Google are suitable for the task at hand. It also goes behind the scenes of Google to explain how search results are ranked and how searches are becoming increasingly personalized for individual users.
Keywords
Advanced searching; Google; PageRank; Search engine; Search personalization; Search results3.1. The Dilemma: “I Can Just Google This, Can’t I?”
It’s a familiar scenario. You have been given a college assignment, which asks you to write a paper on a topic you know little about, for example, the greenhouse effect, since your professor is interested in environmental issues. Although you have heard of it, you are not sure where to start, but you will need a lot of information to write a complete paper. Where should you look first? Chances are that you will resort to the resource that you always turn to first: Google, of course. However, when you enter the phrase greenhouse effect in the search box, you quickly discover that there are 7,680,000 search results for this query! The first one is Wikipedia, which you have been told by your professor that you cannot use. The others might be okay, but there are just so many links. How do you select the sources to use for your paper? Is Google really helping you at all, or just making you more confused?
When it comes to academic assignments, it cannot be denied: Google is the research tool of choice for students like you, and it begins before you even walk through the college gates. A survey by the Pew Internet Research and American Life Project asked teachers which sources their students were very likely to use for a typical research assignment; 94% of them said Google or other online search engines (Purcell et al., 2012). Another study by the Project Information Literacy team found that, although college freshmen students did use other sources as well, such as academic journals, many of them often did a Google search for an unfamiliar topic first, then took the keywords they found through the Google search and used them in the library databases to make their searches more accurate (Head, 2013). However, some of the students who were surveyed said that they preferred to stick to searching Google because it was what they were familiar with from high school. What do you do? There are many reasons why you might turn to Google first when you have an information problem: it’s simple, straightforward, very fast, and, after all, you almost always find something you can use. When it comes to college work, however, there are some things you should know about Google and how it works so that you can make good decisions about when you should and shouldn’t use it for your assignments. You should read this chapter together with Chapter 7 to expand your understanding of how to use the Internet effectively for academic work.
In this chapter, you will:
• reflect on your attitude toward Google (and all Internet search engines) as a tool for college work.
• consider how you select the online sources to use from the list of search results you retrieve when using Google.
• learn how search engines locate, index, and retrieve sources in response to search queries.
• discover how Google ranks the list of search results that you receive in response to your query and how to use this information to help you judge which sources to select.
• become aware of search personalization and how it can affect your search results.
• learn how to refine and optimize your searches using Google’s search features and operators. In other words, become Google-wise!
3.2. Can I Just Google It?
The web is not the Internet. Although many people, (including some who should know better), often confuse the two. Neither is Google the Internet, nor Facebook the Internet.
The answer to this dilemma is both no and yes! Google can be used for college work, but it is unwise to think that you can just Google anything. The quotation above should be taken seriously. While Google is a tremendous tool, it does not—indeed cannot—provide the perfect single solution to any information problem, especially the information problems that you will encounter in higher education. This chapter shows you how to be smart and savvy about using Google to find exactly what you need or at least to set you in the right direction. The basic Google search page is deceptively simple, although this user friendliness is one of the reasons it is so popular. Behind the clean, uncluttered interface, with the occasionally intriguing Google Doodle, lies a highly sophisticated mechanism that continuously, even endlessly, contrives to impose some degree of order on the unruly mass of free-floating information on the World Wide Web. Understanding, even at a most basic level, how this mechanism works is an important step to becoming a skilled digital detective in the Googleverse.
3.3. But First: Indexes!
To understand how an Internet search engine works, it is useful to first make sure that you know what an index is. Most people’s experience of an index might be the alphabetical list of words or authors’ names that you find at the back of a book, which shows you exactly where you can find particular topics or names in the main text of the book. You use an index to avoid having to flick through every page in the entire book in the hope of finding the passage you are interested in or trying to remember which page contains the passage you are looking for. The process of indexing a book involves selecting important words, phrases, or names on every single page and listing them separately in alphabetical order, along with the page numbers where they appear. A single term could be indexed to just one or to several pages in a book, depending on its importance in the context of the book’s subject matter. In a way, you can think of an index as a map to the content of a book, with directions on how to find the location of words and phrases to make precise searching easier. The function of an Internet search engine is to do just that; however, instead of a single book, Internet search engines attempt to provide a map or index to the entire content of the Web and to make that index easily searchable by users. This mapping means you can avoid having to “flick through” the entire Web to find what you need. The workings of search engines are explained below.
3.4. How Search Engines Find Information for You
An important thing to be aware of is that the process of Web searching is automated. This means that there is no direct human involvement in picking out and serving up your search results (although it is, of course, humans who create and fine-tune the mechanisms of the search engine). The basic function of an Internet search engine is to match a user’s query to the index that has been created of the content of webpages. To do this, search engines perform more or less three key tasks:
1. They continually search the Web, scanning for updates to existing websites and for new websites that have been created.
3. They enable you, the searcher, to enter queries, which then are matched against the index, and they provide you with a list of the uniform resource locators (URLs), or links, that best match your query in your list of search results.
To carry out these functions, search engines, including Google, consist of four basic components:
1. Web crawlers or spiders: There is constant activity behind the scenes of the search page that you see before, during, and after you enter your query. To use the jargon of the Web, “spiders” are simply automated programs, or robots, that crawl from webpage to webpage by following the links on each page. As they crawl through the Web, the spiders collect information from each page—for example, updated or new content—and send it back to the index. Spiders usually start their journey through the Web at particularly popular webpages or servers, following every link that they find there and spreading out quickly. However, it is possible to avoid the spiders. In some cases, when website owners do not wish their pages or parts of their pages to be crawled and indexed, the robot exclusion standard is applied; this is a protocol that instructs spiders not to index the words on a particular page nor to follow the links. The pages in question do not, therefore, show up in the search results for that particular search engine. You should be aware that, because of this, many pages might not be found by performing a basic Web search. Using a search engine to trawl through the Web is far from an exhaustive strategy. We discuss this particularly in Chapter 7, when we explore the “Deep Web.”
2. Index: The index of a search engine is enormous. Webpages often are indexed under every single word that appears on the page, in the titles and subtitles, as well as the URL of the page itself, the URLs of other pages that appear on the page, and any metatags, image files, and so on—although different search engines do have different approaches to spidering. For example, some search engines do not index small words like a and the, whereas others index only the 100 most frequently used words on a page. In the early days of the Internet, a search engine would index maybe a couple of hundred thousand webpages; nowadays, as the Internet continues to grow, search engines such as Google must index hundreds of billions of pages. In a typical index, such as at the back of a book, words are listed with just the page number(s) on which they occur. If a search engine index were to follow this approach, it would mean that each word on a webpage would be indexed with just the URL where it could be found. In reality, however, this is not a useful way to store information about a webpage because it takes no account of the context, or the importance of that word on a particular page. As a result, there would be no way for a search engine to rank its search results in a helpful way for searchers. Search engines must include more information about the words in their indexes; for instance, they might include the number of times a word appears on a page, or they might give a heavier weighting to certain words to indicate their importance. We look at search result ranking more closely in Sections 3.5 and 3.6 below.
3. Search engine program: The third component is the program that searches through the index and attempts to retrieve webpages that correspond most closely to the query that a searcher has input into the system. You should understand that when you type a query into a search engine, you are not, in fact, searching the Web. Instead, you are searching the index that has been compiled through the crawling activities of the spider, which in turn points you toward the pages themselves. Search engines use complex algorithms to search the index when a query is entered. An algorithm is “a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2015). Algorithms differ from search engine to search engine. The results from a Google search might differ from those retrieved from Bing or Yahoo!, depending on the information scanned by the algorithms and how relevance is determined. The algorithms used by the various search engines are closely guarded secrets; the commercial potential of the Web, and the marketability of the data that are collected about users, have led to ferocious competition between search engine developers to attract the most users. If a search engine provider were to reveal its secret formula, this could potentially leave it open to manipulation by website owners who wish to push their sites up the rankings or allow it to be copied by competitors. Equally, however, concerns that the secrecy of search engine algorithms means that no one really knows exactly how search results are ranked have also recently been expressed; for example, could they be deliberately skewed toward particular sites, or are they designed to exclude others (Vasager & Fontanella-Khan, 2014)? Awareness of these potential concerns enables us to make informed decisions about the quality of the information that we find on the Web.
4. User interface: The user interface is the part of the search engine that you see and interact with. It is the page where you enter and refine your query, and where your results appear when the search is complete. At its most basic, the user interface consists of a simple search box, into which you type your terms and press “enter.” Think of the Google homepage, which is laid out with the simplest of designs. However, search interfaces also usually provide access to an advanced search page, where you can adjust your search query and apply various parameters and limiters to allow you to carry out the most precise search possible. (How to create an effective search strategy is the subject of Chapter 8.) The page where your results appear is called the search engine results page (SERP). Most search engines do not just display links to websites on this page, but they do group results from their image or video databases. Google, for example, also serves up a list of related searches for situations where searchers may not be sure what they are looking for. Studies of searcher “first click behavior” have shown that the order or ranking of results on the SERP is extremely important in terms of the links searchers choose. For example, one study showed that search results that appear in the part of a SERP that has to be scrolled down to are very rarely clicked on; that is, links that do not appear on the visible part of the SERP are less likely to be viewed by the searcher (Hochstotter & Lewandowski, 2009). Other studies have also shown that very few users move on to the second SERP after carrying out a search on a search engine (Barry & Lardner, 2010). For commercial entities that rely on user clicks to increase their business, this is a serious matter. Search engine marketing is the name given to the strategies that are applied by business owners to drive users to their websites. The issue of search result ranking is discussed in the following section.
3.5. How Does Google Decide the Order of the Search Results List?
When you carry out a search using Google, what assumptions do you make about the order of the search results that you receive? Take a moment to consider your search behavior. Do you, for example, assume that the search results that appear first are the most useful or relevant to your query? Or do you diligently scroll through every single result served up by Google to determine which links are the most important? How do you decide which result to click on first? Understanding how search engines such as Google rank their search results is essential because it empowers you to make better decisions about the sources that you use. In the case of search engines, first might not always mean first rate.
You have probably noticed that when you carry out a search, two types of results appear: sponsored links and normal, or organic, links. The sponsored links usually stand out by being labeled as ads or being otherwise marked as separate from the organic links—by being displayed in a sidebar, for example. Sponsored links occur when commercial entities or other parties purchase the right to be displayed on the SERP once a particular keyword or combination of terms is entered, which may give them some competitive advantage in the marketplace, especially when search results are location-based. The organic links, by contrast, are the results that the search engine has deemed to be the most suitable matches for the query that was entered by the searcher. How the order of Google search results is determined is explained below.
3.6. PageRank: Google’s Ranking System
As mentioned before, search engines generally work by matching the words in a searcher’s query to the words in its index of webpages. However, without some means of determining which results are potentially the most useful, the most relevant, and of the highest quality, the links that appear would be random and unlikely to satisfy your information need. If ranking was based, for example, on the number of times your search terms appeared on the webpages retrieved, it would then be possible for website creators to manipulate the search engine results by including certain keywords multiple times on the page. This type of manipulation is known as keyword stuffing, and search engine developers have sought ways to prevent it. Google’s search results are ordered by a trademarked metric known as PageRank™, the exact details of which have never been made known publicly. However, we can still glean some basic insight into how it works.
PageRank assigns a numerical score to each webpage, which determines how far up the SERP the webpage appears for a given query. A higher score means a higher ranking and a higher probability that a webpage link will be clicked on by the searcher (remember first-click behavior!). To understand how this score is calculated, it is helpful to think of the process almost as a popularity contest for websites, where ranking is based on the number of votes that a website receives! However, unlike the X Factor or other reality shows, the votes are not cast by humans; rather, the popularity of an individual website is determined partly by the number of incoming links to that website and the quality of the sites that provide these links. In simple terms, the more links there are to your site from other high-quality website, the higher your site will be ranked on the SERP by the Google search engine. The logic behind this system is that other websites are more likely to link to sites with perceived high-quality content than average or low-quality sites. However, even within this process, votes from different sites are not all considered equal. Links from sites that are themselves considered high quality (i.e., those with a high PageRank score) are more valuable than incoming links from lower-quality sites. Moreover, votes from sites that seem to be less discriminating and link to hundreds of other pages count for much less than those from sites that link only to a selected few. This system encourages website creators to consistently produce high-quality and up-to-date content, which in turn encourages more pages to link to these webpages.
Although there are an estimated 200 other factors counted in the PageRank algorithm, including keyword position, density, multimedia, and broken links, incoming links from other sites are believed to be the most important criterion. However, search results are increasingly being influenced by factors that relate directly to your online behavior. The next section explains how.
3.7. What Is a Filter Bubble? The Personalization of Search Results
Have you ever noticed that when you carry out a search, sometimes the results seem to be almost spookily tailored to your interests or to your location? Have you seen ads popping up on various websites that you visit that seem to suggest just the kind of products or services that you are currently interested in? It can occasionally seem like the search engine can read your mind, and, in a way, it can. For example, you may have spent 20 minutes searching for a new pair of winter boots, and the next day, when you are browsing through Facebook, an ad for the precise kind of leather boot you are searching for pops up in your newsfeed. How is this possible, when everybody who searches Google is effectively searching the same database of Web content? When searching Google and, increasingly, other search engines, one of the most important things to be aware of is how a number of factors specific to you, including your geographic location, previous search history, browsing behavior, and a myriad of other online click signals, influence the results that you receive when performing a new search. In 2005 Google introduced personalized search to the normal Google search for Google account holders (later applied to all users of Google search); this feature forever changed the way information is delivered to individuals when using Web search engines. Personalization of content is also a feature you may have noticed on the social media sites that you use; for example, your Facebook newsfeed might seem to include only items that you are interested in and exclude posts from friends whom you do not interact with much and probably wouldn’t read anyway. This increasing customization of Web content is called a filter bubble, described as follows:
The new generation of Internet filters looks at things you seem to like – the actual things you’ve done, or the things people like you like – and tries to extrapolate. They are predictive engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are and what you’ll do and want next. Together these engines create a unique universe of information for each of us – what I’ve come to call a filter bubble – which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information.
Personalized search works by building a profile of your search habits over time through the placement of cookies, which are “small files that websites put on your computer hard disk drive when you first visit” (Microsoft Safety & Security Center, 2014). The longer you interact with a search engine, more data about your search behavior are stored. These data then are used to try to predict the type of content that you are more likely to engage with and that may be more relevant to your needs. For example, if you are a lover of independent music and often visit www.pitchfork.com, the search engine will learn over time that you like this site, and it will boost the site in search result ranking when you perform music-related searches. You might have a friend, on the other hand, who prefers classical music and frequently browses the BBC’s www.classical-music.com, which then receives a ranking boost for her searches. If you both searched for “top albums of 2015,” your search results might look rather different, despite both of you using the same search engine. Personalized search is, therefore, the reason why two people performing the same search on different browsers might not get the same results.
3.8. Web and App Activity
Search personalization on Google works in two main ways. First, if you are logged into your personal Google account and have Web and App Activity (search history) turned on, information about the searches you carry out and details of your browser and app activities are recorded and stored, including the following:
• Searches you have done on Google products, like Search and Maps
• Whether you searched from a browser or an app
• Ads you respond to by clicking the ad itself or completing a transaction on the advertiser’s site
• Your IP address
• Your browser type and language
• Results that are returned, including results from information on your device (like recent apps or contact names you searched for) and private results from Google products like Google+, Gmail, and Google Calendar.
If you do not wish for Google to record your search behavior, you can turn Web and App Activity off by first logging into your Account History page at www.google.com/history, where you will be prompted to enter the login details for your Google account, if you are not already logged in. If you are logging in from the basic Google homepage, click on Settings in the bottom right-hand corner, then on History to bring you to the Web & App Activity page. You will arrive at a default screen that shows you a record of your Web and App activity on Google, including your past searches and content that you have browsed on this browser and other apps. Figure 3.1 displays the Web & App Activity screen in Google Chrome.
You can expand this page to show your other activities by clicking on the menu at the top right-hand corner (three vertical dots on Google Chrome), then on Settings. On this page, you have the option to Show More Controls. Clicking on this option brings up all of your activity, including:
• your searches and browsing activity.
• places you go.
• your voice searches and commands.
• videos you search for on YouTube.
• videos you watch on YouTube.
On this page you have the option to remove selected search items or to delete the entire history of your searches. For each item, you will see a slider button to the right. If the button is blue and has been moved to the right, your activities are being recorded by Google. To pause the recording, simply slide the button to the left for each item, and the button will turn gray, which indicates that the activity on each item is no longer being recorded. Clicking on Manage Activity for each of these items provides you with a detailed history of your activities for time periods that you can specify by selecting from a dropdown menu. You can also delete specific activities, as you wish. Figure 3.2 shows the control screen.
If you choose, you can also download a full copy of your data from Google from this page. Simply click again on the menu at the top right-hand corner (three vertical dots on Google Chrome), then select Download Searches. This option enables you to create an archive of all of your past searches. Google then emails you when the archive is ready to download. You will receive a zip file containing your data, which you can download to your device or view in Google Drive.
3.9. Internet Protocol Address
The other way that Google records searches is through the Internet protocol (IP) address of your computer. The IP address is “the numerical Internet address assigned to each computer on a network so that it can be distinguished from other computers. [It is] expressed as four groups of numbers separated by dots” (IAB Ireland, 2015). While Google is not able to link your search behavior with your personal Google account, it records the searches of anyone who uses that specific device to search the Web. Furthermore, if you do not delete your browsing history, anyone who uses that device after you will be able to see your searches. If you want to find the IP address of your device, there are various websites that will detect it for you, including http://whatismyipaddress.com and www.howtofindmyipaddress.com. Alternatively, if you simply enter “IP address” into the Google search box, it will display the IP address of the device you are using as the first search result!
It is up to you whether you allow your searches to become personalized. You may like the idea of searches being tailored to your interests, particularly when it comes to things like searching for vacations, events, music, and leisure activities. The downside of personal search, which has been flagged by authors like Pariser (2011), is that you could sometimes miss important information that is excluded from your search results because it does not fit with your search history. Being aware of this issue can help you to make an informed choice about how you wish to set up your search strategy.
3.10. How Do I Become Google-wise?
The key to being Google-wise is to become familiar with and know how to use the different settings, functions, and operators that are available to optimize your search experience. Being Google-wise not only allows you to perform more precise and useful searches but also empowers you to increase or decrease the level of personalization of your search experience—or at least to be aware of the potential effects of personalization on your search results. In this section we look at three specific aspects of Google searching that will help you to hone your digital detective skills:
• Priming your search (e.g., search settings, history, location)
• Google advanced search
• Google search operators
Google and other search engines allow you to perform exceptionally precise searches by adding and combining a series of operators that allow you to dictate, for example, the type of source or the location, including position, on a page or URL the search engine should look for using your search terms. Being Google-wise means that you are adept at creating search strategies that filter out much of the irrelevant information and serve up results that you will potentially find useful.
3.10.1. Google Search Settings: Priming Your Search
Before you even begin to search, however, you should take a few minutes to set up Google exactly as you want. To do this, click on Settings at the bottom of the main Google search page and then on Search Settings, where you are presented with a number of options that you can set up according to your preferences:
• Safe search filters: You can use this setting to filter sexually explicit content from your search results; you also have the option to “lock” this setting if you want to prevent others from changing it.
• Google instant predictions: You may have noticed that as you begin to type a query into the Google search box, a list of suggested search terms appears underneath the box and changes as you add more letters to your search terms. This is Google’s attempt to predict what you might be searching for and is based on the popularity of previous searches. The Instant Predictions setting is where you tell Google whether you want it to show you these suggested terms as you type in your queries. You can tell it to always do this, to do this only when your computer is fast enough, or never to do this, depending on your preference.
• Number of results per page: If you are using Google Instant Predictions, 10 results per search results page will automatically be displayed. However, if you opt out of instant predictions, you can specify the number of results that you would like to appear on each search page, from 10 to 100.
• Where results open: Here, you can tell Google to open results in a new window in your browser, if you prefer. You might do this to avoid having to repeatedly use the back button to browse through your search results.
• Spoken answers: Where voice search is enabled, such as in the Google app on your mobile device, you can specify whether answers should also be spoken or delivered in text only.
3.10.2. Google Advanced Search
Advanced Search is also accessed by clicking on Settings in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen on the main Google page. As with all databases, advanced search enables you to be extremely precise about how you search, through cleverly combining search terms to narrow or broaden a search and through applying various filters that give precise instructions to the search engine with regard to the documents, images, or other source types that you wish to retrieve.
Within advanced search, you can tell Google to find webpages with various properties:
• Contain all of the words that you enter: This means that only results that contain all of the words will be displayed. Results that only contain one or the other word will be excluded. This corresponds with the Boolean AND operator, which is explained in Chapter 8.
• Contain an exact word or phrase: You can use this if you want to make sure that certain words appear beside each other in the webpages that you retrieve. This is the same as phrase searching, which is discussed in Chapter 8.
• Contain any of the words you enter: This means that the results you get will contain one, some, or all of the words you enter. This is useful when you are not sure what the best search term to use is. You can use more than one term to make sure you do not miss anything. This is the Boolean OR operator.
• Contain none of certain words that you specify: If you want to make sure that particular words are excluded from your search, you can use this function. This is the Boolean NOT operator.
• Fall within a specific range of numbers: This might include units of measurement, monetary values, and so on.
Advanced Search also enables you to apply certain filters to your search, in addition to the functions described above, to refine it even more. For example, you can further narrow your results by language, region of publication, or last webpage update to ensure currency. Some of the other parameters here can be extremely useful in filtering out unwanted webpages or telling Google that you want only results of a certain type. For example, you can tell Google to indicate the reading level of the documents you retrieve, or to retrieve results at only a basic, intermediate, or advanced reading level. The “filetype” parameter can be especially helpful when you are trying to find more official or academic-type information because it enables you to specify the format of the results found. For example, you can tell Google to retrieve only PDF or Word documents, which could be useful since a lot of journal articles and official reports are in PDF format. If you are looking for slide presentations that people have uploaded after conferences, you can tell Google to retrieve only results in PowerPoint format, using the .ppt extension. Other formats include Excel and Shockwave Flash. Last, Google Advanced Search enables you to specify the usage rights of the documents and images you find. This is a very important search feature, especially if you are searching for images that you can cut and paste into a document or webpage of your own and you wish to avoid copyright infringements, which can lead to legal action. The following different usage rights included in this search filter:
• Not filtered by license
• Free to use or share
• Free to use or share, even commercially
• Free to use or share or modify
• Free to use or share or modify, even commercially
These usage rights are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 6, which deals with copyright and intellectual property rights on the Internet.
3.10.3. Google Search Operators
As if the search functions described above were not enough, Google also allows you to use a range of specialized search operators, which enable you to give very precise instructions to Google about, for example, where on a webpage you wish the engine to search for specific words or the type of source to retrieve. This is a useful function that enables you to build searches very quickly using the basic Google search box. By including an operator along with a colon in front of a search term, you can tell the search engine to do different things. Some of the most useful operators are laid out in Table 3.1
For example, imagine you wish to find out whether there are any documents or reports from University College Dublin (UCD) about information literacy. How can you accurately approach this search? You might consider entering a search string like this in the Google search box:
information literacy site : ucd.ie filetype:pdf
Table 3.1
Google Specialized Search Operators
| filetype: | This is the same as the filetype function in Google Advanced Search. Combining this operator with an extension, such as pdf, doc, or ppt, instructs the search engine to retrieve only items in that particular format. For example, searching for “digital literacy” filetype:doc retrieves only Word documents that are about digital literacy. |
| site: | This allows you to search within a particular site or domain. For example, a search string site:thetimes.co.uk instructs the search engine to search only the website of the UK newspaper The Times. |
| inurl: | The inurl operator ensures that the search terms are found within a particular URL; for example, a search for inurl:digital means that Google will retrieve results where the word digital appears in the URL of the site. |
| allinurl | Where you are entering more than one search term, this operator ensures that they all appear in the URL of the sites retrieved. |
| intitle | The intitle operator allows you to specify that your search term should appear in the title of the webpage. |
| allintitle: | This is the same as above, but is applied when you are entering more than one search term. |
| inanchor: | The anchor text is the clickable text that you see on a webpage, which indicates a hyperlink. With this search operator, you can ensure that your search term appears in the anchor text. |
| allinanchor: | As above, but with more than one search term. |
| related: | This is a very useful operator when you come across a website that you really like. It allows you to find similar websites. For instance, related:bbc.co.uk searches for websites that are close to the BBC site and retrieves sites such as CNN.com, Reuters.com, and the Guardian website. |
| link: | The link: operator allows us, in a way, to apply a PageRank of our own! link: finds all the pages that link to a particular website. This allows us to make judgments about the quality of a website; for example, if many high-quality sites provide incoming links to a website we are interested in, we can draw a reasonable conclusion that the website itself must be of good quality. |
| define: | This operator asks Google for definitions of terms, which are gathered from pages on the Web, including Wikipedia. |
| info: | The info: operator gives you information about a specific URL, including the cached version of the page, similar pages, and pages that link to the site. |
| Table Continued | |
| cache: | As we described previously, Google gathers information from webpages by “crawling” (following link to link), where it takes a “snapshot” of each page at a particular point in time before indexing the page content. This snapshot that Google takes is also known as the cache, and this operator allows you to retrieve a particular website as it appeared the last time the Googlebot crawled it. You should remember that a page may have changed since it was last crawled. Searching for cached pages can be useful if some information seems to have disappeared from a page since you last viewed it and Google has also not crawled it since then. |
In record time, you are presented with almost 100 results, including journal articles written by UCD staff and held in the online research repository, module descriptors, newsletters, course brochures, and book reviews. The search worked extremely well.
3.11. Extra Tip: Refine Your Search on the Results Page
While you can create very specific search strings before hitting Enter, Google also allows you to apply further limiters to your search on the search results page itself (see Figure 3.3). You can instruct Google to refine the search results by country, time (of publication or creation), reading level, and specific location. You can also choose the specific Google database that you wish to search, for example, images, videos, news, books, and more.
3.12. Google with Care
Googling is always a possibility, but to be a really effective search engine user, you need to go beyond your comfort zone and really learn how to make the most of the different tools and functions in the system to get the results that you need. Take your searching seriously. While clicking on the first result might be the quickest and most convenient option, you should understand that ranking might not necessarily correspond with the best or most relevant information for your query. Take time to think about the type, format, and quality of information you need, and use Google search operators to narrow down your search before you click the Go button. Be aware of the potential effects of personalized search and make a decision about the level of privacy that you wish to maintain. Above all, understand that Google is just one of a wide and varied range of search tools that you can use to complete your college work and that it should never be considered a one-stop shop for your information needs.
3.13. Other Search Engines
There is no doubting Google’s ubiquity and popularity as a search engine. According to StatCounter (2015), in the 12 months before July 2015, Google accounted for 89.96% of worldwide desktop, mobile, tablet, and console Internet searches. Although Google is indeed the go-to search engine of our time, you should not forget that there are many alternative search engines that you can also choose, each with unique features and search interfaces that are worth exploring. Some of the other major Internet search engines include the following:
• Yahoo!: https://ie.yahoo.com
• Ask.com: www.ask.com
• Aol.com: www.aol.com
• Wolframalpha: www.wolframalpha.com
• Exalead: www.exalead.com/search
Whichever you choose, always take the time to explore the basic and advanced search settings of each search engine, as well as the additional options and features that may be included. You should also read the About section to understand the mission and coverage of each search engine, and their privacy policies, and to keep informed about the data that are collected about your search activity. Protecting your privacy online is discussed further in Chapter 11.
3.14. Challenges
If you want to be smart Google searchers, you must practice. Here are some challenges to complete on your way to becoming Google-wise:
1. Find a PDF document about information literacy produced by the American Library Association (Hint: This organization’s name is usually abbreviated to ALA).
2. How many websites link to the CNN websites? What are the first five websites listed?
3. Find a PowerPoint presentation about digital literacy in Australia. Who created the first presentation that comes up in the SERP?
4. Find a definition of hypochondriac on the Web. Which of the first three definitions that you find do you feel is the most trustworthy?
5. Find five websites that are similar to www.webmd.com.
6. Find an image of a dolphin that you are free to modify and use for noncommercial purposes. Who created the image that you have chosen?
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