1 Google Like A Pro! Amy Wright, JD, MLIS Online Research Services Librarian March 2007

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3 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!

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

5 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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8 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

9 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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11 Effective Googling Limit results to a particular site: EX: “research guide” site:.edu EX: “organ donation” site:.gov EX: “drug treatment” prisons site:.org

12 Effective Googling Search for sites that link to a particular website: EX: link: You’ve found a useful website & want to find other sites like it: EX: related: Search for terms within one particular site: EX: “international law” site:

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14 Effective Googling Wrap all of these functions into one search result: EX: info:

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16 Effective Googling Search by filetype (pdf, ppt, xls, doc): EX: “international law” filetype:ppt

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18 Effective Googling Google works like a calculator, too! Above search functions on your Google Cheat Sheet.

19 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

20 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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22 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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25 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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30 Explore Other Search Options

31 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: *Source, Greg Sherman, “Yahoo! Birth of a New Machine,” SearchEngineWatch, Feb. 18, 2004 (accessed at 3/26/07).

32 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.

33 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:

34 A9 A9.com – part of Amazon Searches the Internet + Amazon + Wikipedia... Has a nice “tabs” feature that gives results in different categories.

35 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.

36 Metasearch Metasearch engines: search multiple search engines at one time Jux2.com – searches Google, Yahoo, & MSN simultaneously More search engine options & latest news:

37 Other Tools

38 SSRN & Bepress SSRN: searchable repository of scholarly articles on law, economics, finance, and business. Bepress Legal Repository: searchable repository of scholarly legal articles.

39 Help With SSRN Interested in loading your articles on SSRN? Talk to the reference librarians!

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44 Introducing…Our New Website

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46 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.