Prepared on March 29, 2007 Payam Kabiri, MD. PhD. Epidemiologist GooglingGooglingGooglingGoogling

Google Now a Part of our Culture ! Source: “Google, n." OED Online. June Oxford University Press. (accessed March 26, 2007http://dictionary.oed.com through UB libraries).

How Old is Google? Answer: 8 (9 on September 7, 2007) In September of 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, CA. (

More About Google “Google” is a play on the word “googol” which is the mathematical term for 1 followed by 100 zeros and “…reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web.”

Number of employees: Worldwide, Google employed 7,942 full-time employees as of 6/30/06 Work Environment: Informal: Lava lamps, door on sawhorses as desks, exercise balls for chairs, and dogs roamingLava lamps, door on sawhorses as desks, exercise balls for chairs, and dogs roaming the halls… Google: ●The interface is clear and simple. ●Pages load instantly. ●Placement in search results is never sold to anyone. ●Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction. ●No pop-up ads allowed. A Unique Company Google founders Source: Sergey Brin Larry Page

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...

Why do people Google?

Google Search Rules

A Close Look at Google Search Results Excerpt of page with your terms Matched terms in bold URL, size, date last crawled Link to Cached copy Pages supposedly like this one 2nd page from same site All Google pages from this site Which Google database used Approx. # of hits Terms actually searched on, as Dictionary links Don’t believe the number of Results They are approximate, changing, and not comprehensive

Performing Better Google Searches Use Search Operators AND not needed; default between terms OR includes either of two terms (OR must be in caps) -(space and a - for NOT) (e.g. Michigan –lake) “ ” search a phrase in quotes (e.g. “search engine”) ~ synonym search (e.g. ~pets retrieves cats, dogs..)..Number range (e.g. super bowl ) *Google does not allow truncation. An * replaces an entire word in a search. (the color * is my favorite) Or use Google’s Advanced Search option

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: heamophilia

Effective Googling Google works like a calculator, too! Also it will convert all the scales & currency units !

Google as a Calculator The calculatorcalculator “Solves math problems involving basic arithmetic, more complicated math, units of measure and conversions, and physical constants.” 5+2*2 (addition, multiplication) 2^3 (exponent)(shift+6 keys) Sqrt100 (square root)

Google as a Scale Convertor Conversions USD in Euro (convert $13.75 in U.S. dollars to Euro) 220 Euro in JPY (convert 220 Euro in Japanese Yen) 27 miles in kilometers (convert 27 miles to kilometer) 2.3 pound in kilogram (convert 2.3 pound to kilogram) Definitions Define asthma (provides 1 definition-keyword search result list) Define:asthma (provides a list of definitions-less results)

Google Filetypes Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf) Adobe PostScript (ps) Lotus (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku) Lotus WordPro (lwp) MacWrite (mw) Microsoft Excel (xls) Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt) Microsoft Word (doc) Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb) Microsoft Write (wri) Rich Text Format (rtf) Text (ans, txt) OR use Google Advanced Search

Google Translate Translate from one language to another Translate an entire web page

Google Scholar Covers: medicine, law, 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.

It Gives The Document Citations Also !