1. What is it?
Google search is a search engine created by the company of Google. It was created by two men (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) in 1997 at Stanford University. Nowadays, it is the search engine that is most used in the internet. It works by looking up words that have been searched in public websites (with formats of HTML and PDF mainly). But, besides from word searches, it can also look up weather forecasts, game results, math problems, maps, and currency conversions.
Other advantages that Google has is having the ability to refine the search with ranges of years the articles were written, the certain webpage where to look for, certain words found together in a page, certain words that appear in the title, and even look for a page and don't display any webpage with a certain word! Also, since 2011 anyone can do image searches and voice searches.
2. How does it work?
The search engine works with three basic steps:
1. Crawling and Indexing: Google crawls through each link (if allowed) and sort each page by their content and other factors. The place where they keep track of all these 30 trillion pages is in the index.
2. Algorithms: The use programs and formulas so that, with algorithms, they can understand what you are searching for. After using these hints, they pull out links from the index and rank them with different factors. From there, the results appear at the webpage and in the order they do.
3. Fighting spam: The are constantly fighting spam in order to give out the best information. The detecting of spam is automatic, but sometimes requires manual work. From there on, they notify the website owners and expect them to write back and fix the problems.
3. How do certain websites get to be on page one or at the top of the search?
PageRank, a system created and named after Larry Page, is a system of algorithms that ranks the webpages. It measures the importance of each link relative to the search. It works by results of algorithms regarding to a webgraph where all hyperlinks in the world wide web are at. Each hyperlink to a page gives the page a 'vote'. That means that, for every hyperlink to a page, there are more votes and thus more rank in the page. Also, depending on the rank of the hyperlinks that direct to that page means that the page has a higher rank. PageRank is used by Google Search to place the sites at a certain position in the page of search.
4. What are some "tricks' you can do in search?
The following video gives 18 tricks to refine your search with Google Search. These include searching in one specific webpage, searching for words in a title, searching for a result in certain webpages that end in .gov, .edu, etc.. , search for a result and not display pages with certain words, ranges of years articles are written, and much more! Check this video out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De8dxcNZiDA
5. What is Google scholar and how do you use it?
Google Scholar is a Google Search engine that only searches for scholarly literature. It is helpful for looking for scholar articles around the world.
The features for Google Scholar presented in their website are:
" Search all scholarly literature from one convenient place, Explore related works, citations, authors and publications, Locate the complete document through yout library or on the web, Keep up with recent developments in any area of research, Check who's citing your publications, create a public author profile." - http://www.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html
HOW CAN THIS TOOL BE USED AT CNG?
This tool is already been used a lot at CNG to help teachers and students search for information to help in the learning process. It can also be used to put up projects with all sorts of sources (images, videos, articles, etc..). All these can be found by Google Search Engine. They can also have a refined search and learn about certain materials to be prepared for an exam or a teaching lesson. Finally, they can use Google Scholar to read articles from all over the world about a certain topic. Google, the best search engine in the world will be a great advantage for the CNG community!
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