Google - tips and pitfalls

Using Google to search

A large number of us use Google as the search engine of choice, but is it really the best way to search for information for your academic work?

Google searches for information using algorithms - a set of automated rules which are applied as it trawls for keywords you've put in the search box. Google does not index everything and there is a lot of good information in the hidden web (not to be confused with the dark web!) which will never find it's way in to Google results. The hidden web includes contents of specific databases and collections held by organisations which haven't made these searchable by Google.

The problem is that Google does not exist first and foremost to bring back the information you require. It exists to make money in advertising revenue and so your top links are likely to be sponsored links (whether they are relevant or not). It will often put the most popular results first and you may not want the most popular - you want the most relevant.

Google tracks your use - either by your login or IP address and remembers what you searched for and this will influence what results are brought back in future. Google will assume you want information  from the country in which you are searching  and in the language in which you typed. It tries to mould it's results to you and so two people can get totally different results from the same search.

That said, its academic arm Google Scholar is a useful tool for students for finding articles and papers, but again does not give access to everything. Also, full text access will still often only be available with your University login.

For more information, see the relevant chapter in Phil Bradley's book Expert Internet Searching. available in the LRC.

Image CC0 https://pixabay.com/en/magnifying-glass-google-76520/

Tips for using Google effectively

• If you want to keep your searches private so your searches can't be tracked, you can apply relevant settings or delete search history.
• Use Advanced search to be more specific about your search. You will find this hidden in the Settings menu.
• Use Google Scholar if you want to search academic resources. You can set it just to search just for sources provided by ARU, for example, but you will need to log in to the ARU Digital library first to read the resources. You may want to try turning off the settings too to see everything else that is indexed.
• Use the image search for photographs and images.
• Put words in speech marks to keep them as a phrase "University of Peterborough", "health and safety"  "prime minister". Google tends to look for words next to each other first anyway, but using speech marks is standard for phrase searching in most databases.
• Save typing by using an asterisk (*) to indicate missing letters. Paint* will search for paint, paints, painting, paintings, painter, painters.
• Type the most important search word first in the search box.
• If you just want to search for sites from a particular country type site:.uk (before your keywords), for example, for UK sites. If you just want results from UK government sites, for example, use site:.gov.uk before your search term(s).

Further resources

Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a useful guide to searching Google (but setting Google Scholar up for MIT is not relevant unless you study there!).
The University of Bedfordshire have some useful Google Scholar tips on their library site.
Google itself has provided some video "power searching" courses which you can work through.