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Google Like A Pro!

Amy Wright, JD, MLISOnline Research Services Librarian

March 2007

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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!

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But…

We may love Google, but few users know how to use full search capabilities.

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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!

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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

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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”

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Effective Googling

Limit results to a particular site: EX: “research guide” site:.edu EX: “organ donation” site:.gov EX: “drug treatment” prisons site:.org

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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

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Effective Googling Wrap all of these functions into one

search result: EX: info:www.usfca.edu/law

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Effective Googling

Search by filetype (pdf, ppt, xls, doc):

EX: “international law” filetype:ppt

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Effective Googling

Google works like a calculator, too!

Above search functions on your Google Cheat Sheet.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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, ……

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Explore Other Search Options

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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 (accessed at http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3314171, 3/26/07).

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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.

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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/

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A9

A9.com – part of Amazon

Searches the Internet + Amazon + Wikipedia...

Has a nice “tabs” feature that gives results in different categories.

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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.

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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

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Other Tools

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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/

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Help With SSRN

Interested in loading your articles on SSRN?

Talk to the reference librarians!

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Introducing…Our New Website

http://acadserv.usfca.edu/preview/law_library/

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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.