Understanding Search Engines The Keys To Search City Inquiry questions:  What am I trying to find out?  How do I refine my search to get better results?     Students will use query strategies to search for information on the web. Students will refine search strategies to narrow information sources on the web. Web Search Lesson Plan Module A3

How Search Works An Introduction

Questions About Search What does it mean to search an index of the web? What are spiders? How do they help build Google's index of the web? How does Google search its index when you enter a search query? How does Google decide what search results you really want?

How Search Works Google engineer Matt Cutts explains how Google Search decides which search results to give you, based on your search query.

What Does Google Do When You Search? Search the index: When you click the Google Search button, Google races through its billions of web pages to find every page that contains the word or phrase or group of words you've used. Analyze the web pages for relevance: Google screens web pages in the index to see which ones are most likely to have what you're looking for. Evaluate each site's reputation: Google looks at how often other websites link to these pages to determine how popular or useful each one is. Rank the web pages: Having scrutinized the web pages in terms of their relevance to your search words, Google presents your results, with what we believe are the most useful pages at the top.

Understanding Search Finding the Right Keywords to Use

What Matters In My Search Query? Think of a topic or question you would like to search for. Pick three or four keywords to use in your search query. What happens if you reorder them? Add capitalization or punctuation? What if you take out a word? Have students try a set of similar searches, modifying punctuation, capitalization, and word order.  Discuss the outcomes of these searches with students.  Findings can be collected and written on the board, and compared to the generalizations on [Slide #8].

What Matters In My Search Query? 1 Every word matters. Try searching for [who], [the who], and [a who] 2 Order matters. Try searching for [blue sky] and [sky blue] 3 Capitalization does not matter. Try searching for [barack obama] and [Barack Obama] 4 Punctuation does not matter. Try searching for [red: delicious! apple?] and [red delicious apple] * There are some exceptions! Can you think of any? Click here for a few examples.

Keyword Search How do you come up with the right words to search for? Can you remember a time when you had trouble finding what you were looking for? What makes certain searches hard? Get students thinking about keyword selection with a class brainstorm around the question:  "How do I decide what keywords to use to find what I'm looking for?"  List all ideas and strategies on a white board. Discuss with students their experiences finding things that weren't easy to search.  How would these ideas help?

Tips For Better Searches 1 Keep it simple. Describe what you want in as few terms as possible. 2 Think of how the page you want will be written. Use words that are likely to appear on the page. 3 Use descriptive, specific words. Avoid general or common words. Share with the class three general tips on selecting effective keywords to narrow their search results.  Ask students to provide examples and counterexamples of each tip.  Keep it simple. Describe what you want with as few terms as possible. Think of how the page you want will be written. Use words that are likely to appear on the page. Use descriptive, specific words. Avoid general or common words.

Think Before You Search What am I looking for? What do I want? What am I trying to find? What am I trying to find out? What keywords could I use in my search query? How would I talk about this? How would someone else talk about this? How can I describe this better? Which of these keywords are common or general words? Which would be more specific? Are there better words I could use? What kind of results am I looking for? Do I want a definition, a database, a list, a map, an image, a video, or something else?

Give It A Try! Pick a topic you want to find out about and brainstorm keywords to use in your search query. Remember: Keep it simple. Use descriptive words. Think of how the page you want will be written. And most importantly: Think before you search!

This lesson was developed by: Trent Maverick Tasha Bergson-Michelson This lesson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike license. You can change it, transmit it, and show it to other people. Just always give credit to Google.com ("Attribution"), and make sure that any works you make based on these lessons are also under the same Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike license ("Share-Alike"). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode.