Googling
Payam Kabiri, MD. PhD.
Epidemiologist
Prepared on March 29, 2007
Google Now a Part of our Culture !
Source: “Google, n." OED Online. June 2006. Oxford University Press. http://dictionary.oed.com (accessed March 26, 2007
through UB libraries).
How Old is Google?
Answer: 8 (9 on September 7, 2007)
In September of 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, CA.
(http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/history.html#1995)
More About Google
• “Google” is a play on the word “googol”
which is the mathematical term for 1
followed by 100 zeros and “…reflects the
company's mission to organize the
immense, seemingly infinite amount of
information available on the web.”
A Unique Company
Google founders
Larry Page
Number of employees:
Worldwide, Google employed 7,942 full-time employees as of 6/30/06
Sergey Brin
Work Environment:
Informal: Lava lamps, door on sawhorses as desks, exercise balls for chairs, and dogs roaming
the halls…
Google:
●The interface is clear and simple.
●Pages load instantly.
●Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
●Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.
●No pop-up ads allowed.
Source: http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tenthings.html
Why do we love Google?
• Size and scope: Now indexing over 20 billion
web pages (conservative estimate).
• Relevance of Results: PageRank
• Diversity of Search: Image, News, Book
Search, Scholar, Blog Search, Finance, Froogle,
Video . . . and much, much more.
• Other Tools: Google Maps, Picasa, Blogger,
Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets . . .
Why do people Google?
Google Search Rules
A Close Look at Google
of page with your terms
Search Results •• Excerpt
Matched terms in bold
• Which Google database used
• Approx. # of hits
• Terms actually searched on, as Dictionary links
• URL, size, date last crawled
• Link to Cached copy
• Pages supposedly like this one
• 2nd page from
same site
• All Google pages
from this site
Don’t believe the number of Results
They are approximate, changing, and not comprehensive
Performing Better Google Searches
Use Search Operators
AND not needed; default between terms
OR
includes either of two terms (OR must be in caps)
(space and a - for NOT) (e.g. Michigan –lake)
“ ” search a phrase in quotes (e.g. “search engine”)
~
synonym search (e.g. ~pets retrieves cats, dogs ..)
..
Number range (e.g. super bowl 1975..1978)
*
Google does not allow truncation.
An * replaces an entire word in a search.
(the color * is my favorite)
Or use Google’s Advanced Search option
Effective Googling
• Need Exact Phrase? Use quotation marks!
– “Americans with Disabilities Act”
• Expand Search With Synonym? Use a
“tilde”
– EX: “~health decisions” finds materials that contain
the phrase “medical decisions” as well
• Exclude words that you don’t want? Use a
“minus sign.”
– EX: virus –computer
• Find definition of a word or a phrase?
– EX: define: heamophilia
Effective Googling
• Google works like a calculator, too!
• Also it will convert all the scales &
currency units !
Google as a Calculator
The calculator
“Solves math problems involving basic arithmetic, more
complicated math, units of measure and conversions,
and physical constants.”
• 5+2*2 (addition, multiplication)
• 2^3 (exponent)(shift+6 keys)
• Sqrt100 (square root)
Google as a Scale Convertor
Conversions
•
•
•
•
13.75 USD in Euro (convert $13.75 in U.S. dollars to Euro)
220 Euro in JPY (convert 220 Euro in Japanese Yen)
27 miles in kilometers (convert 27 miles to kilometer)
2.3 pound in kilogram (convert 2.3 pound to kilogram)
Definitions
Define asthma
Define:asthma
(provides 1 definition-keyword search result list)
(provides a list of definitions-less results)
Google Filetypes
•
•
Adobe Portable Document Format
(pdf)
Adobe PostScript (ps)
Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4,
wk5, wki, wks, wku)
Lotus WordPro (lwp)
•
MacWrite (mw)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Microsoft Excel (xls)
Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
Microsoft Word (doc)
Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
Microsoft Write (wri)
Rich Text Format (rtf)
Text (ans, txt)
OR use Google Advanced Search
Google Translate
http://google.com/translate_h/
Translate from one language to another
Translate an entire web page
Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com
• Covers: medicine, law, social sciences,
arts, humanities, business, & finance.
• Included items: peer-reviewed papers,
theses, book excerpts, abstracts & full-text
articles
• Sources for items: academic publisher
web pages, professional societies, preprint
repositories, universities, & other scholarly
organizations.
It Gives The
Document
Citations
Also !