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Top 10 things you should know about search!

April, 2010

By Daniel M. Russell, Ph.D. Google

Content in this presentation islicensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Background information for teachers

• This presentation is given as a set of 10 challenge questions. When I teach it, I intersperse tactics and heuristics for searching with questions. I’ve found that asking these questions often motivates the students by illustrating that they don’t REALLY know everything about how to search.

• Note that words in square brackets [ search terms ] are queries that you’re supposed to run on Google. When you do the query, you need not include the brackets (they’re just there to set the terms off from the regular text.)

• Another superb resource for teachers is the Google Search Lesson Plans, a set of 9 lessons that cover the entire range of materials needed to understand how to search. These can be found at:

http://www.google.com/educators/p_websearch.html

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What kinds of content does Google have?

• Images • Blogs• Code • Video • Patents • Books • Shopping • Finance • Maps • Groups• News • Scholar

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Skill #1: Finding something on the web page

• How can you find something on the page?

(Where does the name “Lewis” appearon this page?)

Question #1…

• What was Dan Russell’s time in the Juana Run of 2009?

• To get started, do this query:

[ Juana Run results 2009 ]

– then click through to the results page

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It’ll look like this… Now… where’s Dan’s time?

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Basic search 101—Find on page

• Do you know how to find something on a web page?• Hint: Use the Find command under the edit menu…

– Edit>Find– just type Control-F (on Windows) or Command-F (on Macs)

Note that s

ometimes t

he find

text is

at the botto

m of the

window.

Each bro

wser is

a little

differe

nt.

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How to find-on-this-page

• Use CONTROL-F

Or COMMAND-F

to find your text on the page

• NOTE that when you do the find, the computer will scroll the window to that location and highlight your found text.

• Just press the ENTER key to jump to the next found text!

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Note: Sites often have their OWN search

• Sometimes a web site’s own search tool can be very effective – More up-to-date with latest information – Might index parts of the website not visible to search engines– Example: NationalGeographic.com

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Skill #2: Naming the un-namable

I noticed the other day that everyone has a little indentation on their upper lip.

Question: What’s that thing called?

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#2 – Answer

• Start with the simplest search you can think of: [ upper lip indentation ]

If it’s not right, you can always modify it.

• When I did this, I clicked on the first result.There’s a nice article there about something called the philtrum.

• Then I double checked on that by doing a [ define:philtrum ]

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Skill #3: Linked search problems

Question: What day of the week is the Secretary of Defense’s birthday THIS YEAR (2010)?

Is his birthday on a Sunday? A Monday? A Tuesday? etc.

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#3 – Answer

• This is a really hard question because it comes in parts.

1. Who’s the Secretary of Defense? Try [ Secretary of Defense ](Answer: It’s Robert Gates)

2. When’s his birthday? (Check out the Wikipedia entry) (Answer: It’s September 25, 1943)

Answer, step 3

3. What day of the week is that for 2010? (Find a calendar. Try [ calendar ] then look up September 25)

(Answer: It’s a Saturday!)

Did you know you could look up calendars??

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Skill #4: Think carefully about synonyms

• When an artist is making a sculpture for a client, they often make a small version of the sculpture to scale in wax or clay. They’re usual a preliminary sketch, presented to the client for approval

• Question: What is this thing called?

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#4 - Answer

• The easiest solution I found was [ artist’s small scale model ] – then read through the snippets to find a definition.

How to use DEFINE:

• To double check, you can use Google as a dictionary:

[ define:maquette ]

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#5 – Use images

• I was hiking in the woods nearby in March when I saw a pretty blue flower. It was about 3 feet high, and grew along the pathway in the middle of the woods in Henry Coe State Park in California!

• Question: Here’s the picture… can you tell me what the common and Latin name is of this flower?

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#5 – wildflower images – answer

• Search: web for [ blue wildflowers henry coe ] – Look for collections of pictures. Look for a matching / similar

picture.

• Answer: Western hound's tongue (Cynoglossum grande)

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#6 – When’s the movie playing?

• So you want to go to the movies tonight in Menlo Park, CA… How do you find out what’s playing in the Menlo Park theatres?

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#6 – Google Shortcuts: The way to find movies

• [ movies menlo park ]

• Or… [ movies 94306 ]

#6 – continued… But will it be too hot?

• How do you find out the weather?

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And… the same trick works for weather information

• Google [ weather Menlo Park ]

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Google calculator & conversions

• Did you know Google has a built in calculator?

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That’s cool, but even better…

• How can you convert temperature from Fahrenheit to Centigrade?

• Do you remember the formula? It’s: Tc = (5/9) * (Tf - 32)

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Or.. You could…

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Try it yourself…

1. Convert 35 yards to meters [ 35 yards in meters ]

2. Convert your height to meters [ 74 inches in meters ]

3. Convert 105 pounds into kilograms [ 105 pounds in kilograms ]

4. Convert your principal’s weight into kilograms [ 205 lbs in km ]

5. Convert $105.05 into Japanese Yen [ 105.05 USD in Yen ]

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#7 – Using Maps

• Using Google Maps is a great way to find where something is. But suppose you want to find out how far APART two things are.

Question: How far is it from 900 Beech Street, East Palo Alto, CA, to the

McDonalds on University Avenue in East Palo Alto, CA?

Answer: 0.7 miles… 4 minutes by bike

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Skill #8 – Keep looking! Try MORE synonyms

• Sometimes you need to keep trying, thinking your problem through in different ways. Usually, if you think about how someone else would describe the thing you’re looking for, that will suggest search terms for you.

• Question: A friend told me that there is a lost city in San Francisco Bay. Is that true? If it IS true, what was the name of the supposed city?

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#8 – Answer

• Yes, it’s true… there IS an abandoned city near what is now Fremont. It was called Drawbridge.

• The trick here is to think about other ways of describing an “abandoned city”—don’t just assume that’s the best way to describe it. Try this search:

[ ghost town san francisco bay ]

The former town of Drawbridge

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#9 – How to remove bogus results from your searches

• Sometimes you want to look up something that’s pretty common, so there are LOTS of web pages out there. It’s even worse when the word is really common. So how do you eliminate things you don’t want?

• Question: Can you find a great recipe for salsa to make for dinner tonight?

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#9 – salsa - answer

• The trick here is to remove all those “salsa as dancing” meanings. The quick way to do that in a web search is with the MINUS sign.

[ salsa –dancing ] -- this will remove all the dancing references[ salsa –dancing –tomatoes ]

NOTE: NO space after the minus sign!

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Skill #10 – Try different kinds of content

• Google has many different kinds of content that you can use in ways you might not have thought about: – News– Images– Video– Patents– Maps– etc etc etc

• Question: What is that cluster of gears in the back of a bike called?

#10—Answer—Try an image search to find a diagram

• In Google Images, do:[ bicycle parts] or [ bicycle diagram ]

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What kinds of content does Google have?

• Images • Blogs• Code • Video • Patents • Books • Shopping • Finance • Maps • Groups• News • Scholar

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Google News Archive Search

• http://news.google.com/archivesearch/

• Searches news archives – waaay back… – Note that some require payment

Google Real-time search: The latest results as they’re happening, seconds after they’re posted to the web

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Have a research stance…be not a passive absorber

• Key takeaways: – Make research be a part of everything you do

• When you go on a vacation, looking up things about where you’re going

• When you read a new book, use DEFINE to know what those words are

• When you run across something you don’t understand, consider doing your own research

– Plan on learning new skills • Nothing stays constant on the web • Search engines continually improving • New search tools / new

When in doubt, Search it out!

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When in doubt, Search it out!

It’s the key to learningeverything in the future!

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End

A few great ideas, especially for teachers:

1. Subscribe to the Official Google Research BlogThat way, you’ll always be up-to-date on what’s going on in the

search field. It’s a quick and easy read, well worth the 1 or 2 minutes a day that it takes.

2. Subscribe to my blog “SearchResearch” (SearchResearch1.blogspot.com)

I write about 3 times per week on topics about search, and always pose a new “search challenge” each week. Many of these challenges are great puzzles for kids in classes that will extend their knowledge of what’s searchable, and how to search.

-- or search for [ searchresearch Russell ]

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