Internet Searching 2: Google rocks!

Posted by theresa
May 24, 2008

Everyone starts their research with Google, right? In my last post, I mentioned that I always start with Google, and talked a little bit about clarifying search terms to make my search as successful as possible. Searching is definitely an acquired skill; having a good general vocabulary as well as a good grasp of terminology in your search area helps.

But Google can help too – Google has a number of built-in tools that can really make a difference. “Ten tips for smarter Google searches” is a great article posted on InformIT that lists the following tips: 

The tip I want to talk about is the last one, using Google’s other specialized searches. One of the most intractable issues that faces the library community, and librarians in general, is the idea that with the advent of the Internet, all information is available free online. But the fact is that not all information is available free online, particularly business, scientific, scholarly journals, etc. Publishers in these areas charge high fees for electronic subscriptions to company reports, business news, scholarly journals in many disciplines, and citation databases that provide multiple ways of indexing articles in journals across many fields of research.

Google Scholar is a tool that helps to solve this problem by including only scholarly literature in their results lists. Results lists include journal articles, theses, conference papers, books, pre-prints, abstracts, etc. Access to the full text of every article is not guaranteed; if a subscription is required by the publisher, the searcher will be asked to pay an article fee or told to ask their local librarian to borrow the article. However, it can be valuable to see the citations and abstracts of material that is being published in a particular field.

Google also provides ways to narrow your search by type/format of material as follows:

Reference:

Miller, M. 2006. Ten tips for smarter Google searches. InformIT: Que Publishing. http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=675274&seqNum=1

 

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Comment by tom on June 3, 2008 @ 2:41 pm

I remember back in the day using something like “Northern Lights” or something for scholarly searches. I didn’t even know what Google Scholar existed.

What are your suggestions for just a general knowledge sort of search? What if I’m looking for a specific person (maybe from high school) or perhaps articles related to breastfeeding? Any advice?

Comment by theresa on June 3, 2008 @ 4:05 pm

For people searches, Google would be my first stop. Their general Google search screen includes a “phone book” feature that allows you to type in the following:

first name (or first initial), last name, city (state is optional)
first name (or first initial), last name, state
first name (or first initial), last name, area code
first name (or first initial), last name, zip code
phone number, including area code
last name, city, state
last name, zip code

Try it out using your own name - I find that all you really need to be successful is “firstname lastname state” - no punctuation necessary. It will yield home address and phone numbers in many cases, but also links to web sites that include that name.

Google’s full list of features that you can use from the general Google search screen are listed here:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/features.html#wp

For general topic searching like breastfeeding, I typed “breastfeeding” into Google and got a really good page one result, including support sites like La Leche League, etc. I didn’t get any X-rated results, which is good, but for a search you might be wary about, Google also has on its “advanced search” screen an option to turn on a “safe search” filter so that your search results don’t include “adult sites.” This is particularly handy when searching for Disney princesses, mermaids, etc.

But back to breastfeeding, I would also go to about.com for a general overview and information presented from a variety of perspectives. Basically, the first page of my Google search result included the most popular web sites, which are mostly breastfeeding support/help groups, as well as the wikipedia entry (which can be informative, but at the same time is NOT necessarily an authoritative resource on any given topic). I think it would be a very useful result, but you’d still have to search through each web site before you find actual content-based articles.

To augment that result, you could scroll through the first couple of results pages, choose one that is relevant, and then click the “similar pages” button that will allow Google to refine your search without you having to enter in more search terms.

The about.com search result included a how-to video at the top, some basic FAQ-type articles, lists of support resources, an urban legend site describing a Citizens Against Breastfeeding fictional organization, nutritional info, pediatrician info. Clicking on any of these results would take you to an actual article that has been written by professionals (using that term loosely) in that topic immediately.

p.s. And one Google basic tip: general google searches default to “and” which means that every additional search term you add will narrow your search results. If you’re using general words, the more the better. If you’re using specific terminology, then you don’t need to use as many. If you’re searching for something specific that has generic words in it - a phrase like Star Wars 3 - you can add quotation marks to search the exact phrase.

p.p.s. To be honest, I’ve tried a few test searches, but my ideas must not be complicated enough and Google is pretty good and I haven’t gotten any bad results yet, so I haven’t been able to come up with a good example of search refining. If you give me some searches that were unsuccessful, I could probably troubleshoot :)

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