Google Like A Pro!
Amy Wright, JD, MLIS
Online Research Services Librarian
March 2007
1
Why do we love Google?
Size and scope: Now indexing over 20
billion web pages (conservative estimate).
Relevance of Results: PageRank
Diversity of Search: Image, News, Book
Search, Scholar, Blog Search, Finance,
Froogle, Video . . . and much, much more.
Other Tools: Google Maps, Picasa, Blogger,
Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets . . .
Watch out, Microsoft!
2
But…
We may love Google, but few users know
how to use full search capabilities.
3
Effective Googling
How does Google interpret basic search?
Google places “AND” operator between all
search terms entered in basic search box.
Automatically searches for some plural/singular
and grammatical variants.
You enter: terror tribunals
Google searches: terror AND tribunal OR tribunals
Does not search as exact phrase unless quotes
present!
4
5
6
Effective Googling
Need Exact Phrase? Use quotation marks!
“Americans with Disabilities Act”
Expand Search With Synonym? Use a “tilde”
EX: “~health decisions” finds materials that contain the
phrase “medical decisions” as well
Exclude words that you don’t want? Use a
“minus sign.”
EX: virus –computer
Find definition of a word or a phrase?
EX: define: res judicata
7
Effective Googling
Wild Card operator: Finds search terms
separated by one or more words
EX: “Knox-Keene * Act” finds:
“Knox Keene Plan Act” &
“Knox Keene Health Care Act”
8
9
Effective Googling
Limit results to a particular site:
EX: “research guide” site:.edu
EX: “organ donation” site:.gov
EX: “drug treatment” prisons site:.org
10
Effective Googling
Search for sites that link to a particular
website:
EX: link:www.usfca.edu/law
You’ve found a useful website & want to
find other sites like it:
EX: related:www.usfca.edu/law
Search for terms within one particular site:
EX: “international law” site:www.usfca.edu/law
11
12
Effective Googling
Wrap all of these functions into one
search result:
EX: info:www.usfca.edu/law
13
14
Effective Googling
Search by filetype (pdf, ppt, xls, doc):
EX: “international law” filetype:ppt
15
16
Effective Googling
Google works like a calculator, too!
Above search functions on your Google
Cheat Sheet.
17
Use Specialty Search Functions
Google News: news.google.com
Google Images: images.google.com
Google Blog Search: blogsearch.google.com
Google Finance: finance.google.com
Google Scholar: scholar.google.com
Google Book Search: books.google.com
18
Google News Alerts
Tracking an event in the news?
Create your own Google News alert – it’s
free!
Can choose to monitor latest developments
on web pages, blogs, Google news, Google
discussion group pages, or all of these
sources.
19
20
Google Scholar
Covers: law, medicine, social sciences, arts,
humanities, business, & finance.
Included items: peer-reviewed papers,
theses, book excerpts, abstracts & full-text
articles
Sources for items: academic publisher web
pages, professional societies, preprint
repositories, universities, & other scholarly
organizations.
21
22
23
Google Book Search
Searches full text of indexed books.
If work is in public domain, full contents
usually available.
If not, users can view bibliographic info
(author, title, publisher) and perhaps some
excerpts.
Library partners: UC, Princeton, Stanford,
Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Texas, Oxford,
UVA, Univ. of Wisconsin, ……
24
25
26
27
28
Explore Other Search Options
29
Clusty & Yahoo
Clusty.com:
Categorizes your results for you – great for generating
search terms!
Yahoo:
Deeper page indexing than Google.
Yahoo! indexes up to 500K of a single web page’s content;
Google only indexes up to 101K.*
Use this site for streamlined search interface:
http://search.yahoo.com/
*Source, Greg Sherman, “Yahoo! Birth of a New Machine,” SearchEngineWatch, Feb. 18, 2004 30
(accessed at http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3314171, 3/26/07).
AskX & Searchmash
Askx.com:
Suggests search terms to narrow and expand
your search;
Supplies results from Web, Image Search, Blog
Posts, Video, & Wikipedia on one screen.
Searchmash.com
Google’s anonymous challenge to Askx
Supplies results from Web, Image, Blog, Video, &
Wikipedia on one screen.
31
USA.gov & Rollyo
USA.gov
Find info from local, state, and U.S. government agencies
only.
First place to look for government information &
documents.
Rollyo.com
Allows you to build your own “custom search”: search only
the sites that you use the most.
Google offers this function: http://www.google.com/coop/
32
A9
A9.com – part of Amazon
Searches the Internet + Amazon + Wikipedia...
Has a nice “tabs” feature that gives results in
different categories.
33
Worldcat.org
“Meta-search of library catalogs”: Search
hundreds of libraries at once for an item;
Allows you to locate item in nearby library;
Search by title, subject, or keyword.
34
Metasearch
Metasearch engines: search multiple search
engines at one time
Jux2.com – searches Google, Yahoo, & MSN
simultaneously
More search engine options & latest news:
www.searchenginewatch.com
www.searchengineshowdown.com
35
Other Tools
36
SSRN & Bepress
SSRN: searchable repository of scholarly
articles on law, economics, finance, and
business.
http://ssrn.com
Bepress Legal Repository: searchable
repository of scholarly legal articles.
http://law.bepress.com/repository/
37
Help With SSRN
Interested in loading your articles on SSRN?
Talk to the reference librarians!
38
39
40
41
42
Introducing…Our New Website
http://acadserv.usfca.edu/preview/law_library/
43
44
PageRank
PageRank explained by Google:
Google interprets a link on page A going to
page B as a vote -- by page A, for page B.
Google looks at more than the sheer volume
of votes, or links a page receives; it also
analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes
cast by pages that are themselves
"important" weigh more heavily.
45
