Babson Library Information Literacy Blog

Google is great. I admit it: I use Google constantly to find a lot of information both academic and popular. There are some problems with Google–namely, the overwhelming number of results, the ranking system and the advertisements–but for the knowledgeable researcher, this popular search engine can become an incredibly powerful tool.

Here are a couple of tips to help you and your students use Google better.

1. Background on Search Engines

It’s good to know something about what a search engine like Google is, and what is does. Search engines on the web basically allow you to search the text of web pages that the search engine has indexed. The search engine finds and indexes pages by using a small program called a “crawler”, “robot” or “spider,” which travels from link to link and archives text from the pages it finds. When you search using Google, this is what you’re searching.

If a web page has no links traveling to it, or requires a password to access, Google won’t find it! This is why a lot of academic information isn’t available through Google–it’s hidden from crawlers behind a password wall.

When you type words into the search box on Google’s front page, Google will look for all of the words you typed in on a certain page. Search engines, like most programs, aren’t necessarily all that smart. They will only give back what you put into them.

There are other search engines out there, and they all do things a little differently, and find different things. Other engines include Yahoo, MSN Live Search, Ask.com and many more.

2. Advanced Search

You’re forgiven for not knowing that an advanced search for Google exists. The link to the advanced search is easy to overlook (see below).

The link to the advanced search is small, and located to the right of the search box. However, the control it gives you over your search makes it worth clicking on! Here you can control how you want Google to search for your keywords. You’ll see four options in blue at the top of the page:

You can find results with all of the words you type in (this is Google’s default, by the way–what the basic search does automatically), the exact phrase, at least one of the words or without the words.

Below, you have more options, such as limiting by when the page was first indexed, the language of the page and the domain. For example, to search only the pages of academic institutions in the United States, type “.edu” in the Domain search box.

At the bottom of the page, you will have the option of switching to more specific Google searches.

The most useful of these for academic researchers may be at the bottom, where you can search U.S. Government pages, or search specific college and university pages.

3. Know Your Results

Click on the picture below. Can you tell the ads from the “real” links?

Notice that on the top of the page and on the right-hand side are “results” which are separated from the main body of results, and say “sponsored links” nearby. These are ads Google places around its search results–and they’re tailored to your search!

Take a look at the order of results: the first isn’t always the best! Google ranks pages based not on whether the page is relevant or recent, but (at least in part) by how many links to that page exist. So what you might see on the first page of a Google search isn’t necessarily the “best” information: only the most popular or the most linked-to. It’s wise to look through several pages of results instead of only the first page.

4. Evaluate What You Find

Google will give you lots of sites to look through, but it won’t tell you which ones have solid information, and which are bogus. You will need to evaluate what you find. To help you do this, check out Babson Library’s Guide to Evaluating Web Resources (PDF). This handy sheet has questions you can ask to determine how valid the information on a page is.

Conclusion

Google (and other search engines) have the potential to be incredibly useful tools for researchers and students. There’s a lot of great information out there on the web–hopefully the above tips will help you to get at it.