Google Like A Pro!

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

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!

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”

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: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

14. Effective Googling • Wrap all of these functions into one search result: • EX: info:www.usfca.edu/law

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

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.

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.

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, ……

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: 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).

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: http://www.google.com/coop/

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: www.searchenginewatch.com www.searchengineshowdown.com

37. Other Tools

38. 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/

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

44. Introducing…Our New Website http://acadserv.usfca.edu/preview/law_library/

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.