Google as a Research Tool

Like most widley spread phenonmenons, Google.ca has its ups and downs. While it excels at providing the average 16 year old with basic information for his History essay, finding credible and accurate sources can be difficult. The secret to success while using Google is to know what you're doing.

Google has three ways of processing information. It uses the webcrawler "Googlebot," an indexer and a query processor. The Googlebot locates pages on the web and passes them to the indexer. The Googlebot, however, does not process spam. The indexer receives the full text of all the pages the Googlebot gives. These pages now get stored in the indexer's database, and it files alphabetically by search term. This allows for pages to be found quickly. Google doesn't store key words like a, the, on, or, etc. The Query Processor has a part called "PageRank" which ranks the pages in order of importance. A page with a higher PageRank will show first in Google search results.

To be more effective while searching on Google, simple tricks can be used. Placing quotation marks around phrases allows these words to be searched together. Writing your search in the form of an answer rather than a question also gives better results. Put a hyphen in front of any word you don't want included in your search.

Google can help journalists find phone numbers as well. Just type "phonebook" and then the place you want the number for in the search bar. Say if you want the number for the coffee shop JetFuel, you would type "phonebookjetfuel" in the search bar. Do not put a space after "phonebook."

Google can be a calculator, atlas, measurement converter, stock ticker and an aviation buff. All of these things can help a journalist. They just need to know it's an option.

Google has some great features that help with any article. Google Alerts provide email updates about the most current relevant Google results about any subject. For my final feature I am writing about sustainable food packaging, so I typed in those three words, and am now going to get alerted if anything new about them pops into Google. It's a really neat and easy way to stay on top of things.

iGoogle is an personalized news page. It can give you the top news stories from Google news and CBC news. The user picks and chooses what she wants to have on her page. My page not only has news updates, but it has a word of the day, my gmail inbox (which will help me know when Google Alert sends me anything), and free iTunes store downloads. It helps to keep things organized; it's a one-stop daily information machine.

Google Reader provides you with the updated internet pages. It acts like an email inbox, but for the web. Whenever anything is updated, it is shown on Google Reader. You don't have to search for it, it comes to you.

For my feature story, I am not going to soley use Google to research my topic, but it is a good place to start. Basic research on the topic can easily be done on Google, as well as finding numbers for places that make sustainable food packaging.

When I type in "sustainable food packaging," without the quotation marks, I get 265, 000 pages. When I include the quotation marks I get 1, 940. That's a big difference. I just narrowed down my search by a landslide. It's awesome.

While I understand this post reads a lot like an ad for Google, it is not. There are just many facets of the search engine that most people unfortunatley overlook. Since is it such a popular search engine, people should know how to use it effectively. Whether I am researching for an article or an essay, the first place I always go to is Google. I'm sure it's the same for most students. So it follows then that we should learn a little more about how to get the most out of the site.