How to become a Google Search Master

• Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful

• The word Google came out of googol: 1.0 x 10100

• In 2011, 1, 722 trillion searches were conducted with an average of 4.7 trillion searches each day1

• Top 3 trending ‘How to…?’s’ in Canada:3. How to Shuffle2. How to Love1. How to Rock

1 http://www.statisticbrain.com/google-searches/2 http://mashable.com/2012/12/07/top-google-searches-2012/

Research at Illinois university libraries found that3:• Less than 25% of students were able to perform a

“reasonably well-executed search”• Students rely heavily on Google searches • Students are not proficient in conducting Google

searches

Today’s college students might have grown up with the language of the information age, but they do not necessarily know the grammar.

3 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/22/erial_study_of_student_research_habits_at_illinois_university_libraries_reveals_alarmingly_poor_information_literacy_and_skills

~ Used to search synonyms of the word it is attached to e.g. ~teen would also search teenager, youth, and adolescent

“ “ Enclose words or phrases that should appear in the results exactly the way they are being searched

- Used to indicate a word that should be omitted from the searche.g. -adult would eliminate all search results with the word adult

.. Used to specify a number rangee.g. $200..$2000

The grammar: Search Operators

* Used as a place-card for unknown wordse.g. “the * on the bus go round, and round.”

site: Only the indicated website or domain (e.g. .gc.ca) will be searched

filetype: Only the indicated file type (e.g. pdf, img, jpeg, doc) will be searched

intitle: The attached query has to be found in the title of the search results

Search Operators

asdfa

• http://mashable.com/2011/11/24/google-search-infographic/

• http://www.erialproject.org/

• http://www.googleguide.com/

• http://www.google.ca/insidesearch/searcheducation/index.html

• http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861

Questions?