Improve Google Skills in Five Minutes
Yesterday while attending Frank Nguyen’s session on EPSS there was a discussion around whether people have good search skills. My belief (based on anecdotal evidence and surveys) is that the vast majority of knowledge workers know how to do only the most basic things with search engines. There wasn’t much dispute around this, but the question was raised by someone in the audience:
If I had five minutes to learn to search better in Google, what should I learn / where should I go?
In a way, this is a horribly unfair question. Clearly the topic is bigger than five minutes. Most people lack lots of related skills such as evaluation, understanding of different types of searches, etc. Further, without the context of the kinds of searches that they do, the goals of the search, it’s quite likely that answers will lack important linkage to practice.
In other ways, this question is a brilliant encapsulation of what people seek. They want to evaluate if there really is knowledge that can help them quickly. They are willing to invest five minutes, and would drill down on more information as it appears relevant / needed. They want some value from a small investment of their most precious resource: time.
So, in the spirit of the Big Question on the Learning Circuits Blog, I would like to ask for your help. If you provide a comment with a link to your post, I will link to you in this blog post. The basic question:
What could someone learn quickly to help them become better at using Google?
or more appropriately
What is a method that you use with Google that you believe is not widely known that could help someone?
If you don’t believe that this is a horrible exercise in futility, etc. feel free to express that as well. Almost every big question that I’ve ever asked has had at least a few responses like that.
As an example, a post I did a while ago around finding example RFPs is the kind of thing that we are trying to find.
Posts so far:
We will try to summarize responses so that maybe we can find five minutes of learning that would help the average knowledge worker.
On a different note, if you are interested in working on the summary OR a fuller, richer version of this kind of information, please let us know through a comment or via the form on the Services page.
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June 3rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
1. using “site” to search within a domain….as in, “I know I saw that document on a Duke website, but can’t remember where it was.” blah.doc site:duke.edu
2. using quotation marks to find specific terms or names
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:18 am
1 - Know when to use Google. For general search terms, the Google results can be filled with spam. I will skip Google and go to Wikipedia if I am looking for a definition or description of something. Most articles end with links to related websites or Wikipedia entries for additional information.
2 - Google lets you change the focus of the search. Use the Google News page to search for current events or articles from the Newspapers, Magazines, and Major networks around the world. Use Google Blog Search to find people’s opinion of certain topics. Other search options include Images and Shopping.
Try it, search the Web, News and Blogs for “smart fortwo” each one will give a different set of links about the tiny car that finally arrived in the US this past winter.
June 3rd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I think one of the most important things to ‘learn’ about Google is that they offer so, so, so much more than just search. Do all of your readers realize there is a Google home page that they can customize based on their interests? Do they even know about Gmail? What about Google Maps, or Desktop, or Picasa, or Reader, or Blogger? These are just a few of the almost 40 ‘products’ they have listed on their page. I encourage all of your readers to check out the Google options other than just ’search’, and they may just find what they are really looking for.
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:24 pm
These are great suggestions already. Hope folks will keep them coming.
Mike B - on definitions - what do you think of using the define: operator? Sometimes it works really well for me - sometimes it doesn’t - not sure I’ve really figured out when, but often I start with that if I’m looking for a definition. I completely agree with the links at end of Wikipedia often being a good starting place.
Kevin - first I’m trying to focus this question on Google search as an information seeking tool. That said - do you see anything special about the fact that they are a Google tool? I tend to evaluate each one individually to decide on the value to me.
June 4th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I just posted some info on a Google Search elearning piece I did as a grad school assignment. It’s 12 minutes but I think it’s pretty good. It also has links to a couple other great resources such as GoogleGuide.com which is a pretty extensive resource for those who want to take a deeper dive.
June 4th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Oops..I clicked too quick.
Here’s the link: http://tmiket.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/improving-google-skills/
June 4th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
[...] Google Skills Posted June 4, 2008 In response to Tony Karrer’s post about improving Google skills, here is a 12 minute version that I built for an assignment in the Ed [...]
June 4th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I think the most important thing to learn to search successfully on google is to understand how search results are generated. As many people don’t realize that google takes your previous searches and links and generates according to your preferences, they don’t realize that you may not be getting all of the options.
If I have been looking at a specific topic for a while, I will go far into the search results (pg 9 or 10) and start browsing these. The next time I search, different results come up on the first few pages.
Also, I try to use descriptive sentences with quotes around phrases that I want kept together. One advantage to google over other search engines is that I can be very descriptive this way.
Just as an aside about quotes: I have learned with my children that potentially “tricky” words or phrases really need quotes around them. I learned this when we were searching for information for my son’s project on Costa Rica about “Our lady of the Virgin cathedral”. My name (comprised of two locations) needs quotes if I google it.
June 4th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
I really haven’t used the define: operator. I guess that I am usually looking up a subject and not a term. But that said, I will use Google to check the spelling of a term or see which spelling comes up more often. (58,800,000 for e-learning vs. 17,100,000 for elearning)
A few more ideas. By default, Google presents 10 results at a time. I go to Preferences and increase that to 100. This gives a bigger pool of results.
After looking at the results, I will often modify the search criteria. Sometimes adding quotes will focus the results. Other times using -term to remove unwanted results.
June 4th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
(since the character ” has special meaning to Google, I’m using : where I would normally use quotes)
Mike B: e-learning matches all of :e learning:, :e-learning:, and :elearning:. You can see the effect most clearly by issuing the following queries:
1) :e-learning -”e learning”: (384,000 results)
2) :”e learning” -e-learning: (0 results)
Unfortunately, you also have this:
1) :e-learning -”e learning” -elearning: (0 results)
I’m not 100% sure how to get to the answer I think you want, because:
1) :e-learning -elearning: (10.9M results)
2) :e-learning -”e learning”: (384,000 results)
3) :elearning: (17.2M results)
4) :”e learning”: (43.2M results)
To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to keep Google from turning :”e learning”: into both :e-learning: and :elearning: - that is, you can’t find the hyphen and they play fast and loose with spaces.
June 4th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Mike T - the movie you created is pretty good and certainly contains things that I think a lot of people don’t know about Google. I’ll be curious what reaction you get on it. And likely there are a lot of information literacy programs at schools that could use it. It’s a pretty good encapsulation of the heart of Google Guide.
One thing I was hoping is that we would all try to address something missing from a lot of the discussion about things like operators … namely, how this fits into common search needs or patterns that people commonly have.
For example - the example I cited in the orginal post - finding example documents - the origination was a search problem. The answer was a set of google operators.
Maybe I’m wrong - maybe people just need to be exposed to the operators and they’ll figure out where it fits in their search life - but I have the feeling that most people don’t use the operators because they’ve never understood where they fit - and don’t know why some searches don’t seem to work very well for them. Instead, they put in a basic search string and skim through the results and use only very minimal tricks to modify their search.
So maybe part of the question - what searches don’t work out well if you don’t use these operators. My guess is that the use of ” ” is an easy one to find types of searches. We just didn’t necessarily cite a good one above.
The site: operator definitely works.
Searching for an overview of a topic definitely fits. Not sure what the pattern is there.
Can we put things like understanding variants, stemming, treatment of “-” in the form of how it impacts people?
While I’m somewhat raining on the party here - I think there’s some definite value to be had.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Erick Herring,
I did a few more google searches based on your terms.
17,000,000 for elearning
16,900,000 for +elearning
66,400,000 for e-learning
42,900,000 for +e-learning
20,100,000 for elearning e-learning
857,000 for elearning -e-learning
10,500,000 for -elearning e-learning
Based on the above, e-learning gets the most results. Searching for both elearning e-learning gets fewer results. This could indicate that there are many pages that used both terms. Such as the first result, “Tony Karrer’s blog about eLearning (e-Learning) software”.
This approach can be handy when trying to get a phrase correct. Suppose you want to say, “Dead as a doornail.” But you aren’t sure it isn’t “Dead as a doorknob.”
110,000 for “dead as a doornail”
827 for “dead as a doorknob”
62,300 for “dead as a door”
30,000 for “dead as a door nail”
2,390 for “dead as a door knob”
Virginia,
I did not know that Google looks at previous searches when generating the results. I guess it makes sense. I know that I use Google Maps often and that my web searches are often closer to home instead of all over the country. I would be interested in knowing more about how Google uses prior searches and if there was a way to conduct an unbiased google search.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:03 am
The single most often suggestion I make to people about using Google is the suggestion to use quotation marks around phrases or names. Most are delighted to learn this simple trick. When I talk about plus and/or minus, mostly their eyes glaze over, unless they are beginning to learn how to really research.
If I am talking to someone in the academic world, I point them to Google Scholar and how they can set up the preferences to allow them to search their own institution’s library, if their institution has joined, and if they have the password. Sometimes it is even easier to search their institution’s library through Google Scholar than directly in their school’s online materials, because the Google Scholar searches universally, not catalog by catalog.
Most people, IMHO, want one easy next step to practice at a time, when they are ready for it. A series of tips dribbled out over time somewhere where people are likely to click on the link would probably work best.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Mike B - I like the general result you are pointing out - correct phrase determiner!
Joan - what’s are examples of common searches that don’t work out well when you don’t use the phrase search?
June 5th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Mike, this came to light as I started using library computers. I remembered one of my students (whose job was to write copy so search engines would move the copy towards the top of the list) mentioned that google was based on previous searches. Then I read about it in the Financial Times and (I think) ZDNet Blogs. When I went to a library to look up a resource I needed for class, using the same terms (and order), I came up with totally different results. So I started testing this out on the various computers I use. I don’t think there is EVER an unbiased search on any search engine (or even in the library when you eye-ball the resources) as we always have a bias as we sort information. However, I think it is important to know of what your biases are.
Joan-How do you set the preferences for your library and how did you figure that out? I think one of the important things about this discussion is to figure out why some people know some things and others know other things. I had a student that was very advanced in computer knowledge, that just learned how to capture screen shots using “print screen”. He was shocked that it was so easy and that others with less computer knowledge knew how to do it, “Am I the ONLY ONE that didn’t know that, and why didn’t I and you do?”
June 11th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Although this is not particularly scientific, I have found that when looking for market data about a particular sector using the PDF limiter is useful and possibly also restricting the search to .org, .org.uk, .gov etc. Public bodies push out a lot of valuable market data on industry sectors and much of it is published in PDF format. For small companies that cannot afford to spend thousands on commercial market reports or do not have access to subscription-based databases this approach can sometimes work.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Great point Martin.