Power Searching: Google!

Power Searcher: Techniques & New Trends

Greg Notess

Notess' presentation covered the techniques and movement of “searching” stating that most searches will move from desktop to Mobile and AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) as a future trend.

Notess further propels this future trend of mobile searching by sharing the following quote:

"Our investment in mobile now underlines everything that we do today from search and YouTube to Android and advertising. Mobile is the engine that drives the person and now through a deep investments in machine learning and AI we are building the engine that will drive our future,"

SUNDAR PICHAI, CEO Google

However, Notess provides the following information on Mobile Search Emphasis Issues:

• Fewer Search Features
• Short Snippets
• Mobile Friendly
• Fewer Ads
• Different Results on Mobile
• Soon: Different Databases

In addition to these issues, Notess pointed to a recent announcement made at Pub Con:

Within months, Google to divide its index, giving mobile users better & fresher content

So.....

What are the implications? If mobile searching is becoming a future trend - libraries should be aware of the new elements of Google (and other search engines) that we use for answering reference questions.

SEARCHING TECHNIQUES

The second half of the presentation reviewed different search techniques:

• search tools, filters,
• query boxs commands
• advanced search pages
• wildcard word in a phrase
• * at the end of word it is ignore (when you have part of the word or phrase but not all)
• quotes not required (broader results if no quotes)
• number range search Keyword 5..8.34 (.. means numbers up to)
• Numrange: 5-8.34
• can include $ (no other currency)

GOOGLE NEWS

• 81 languages, countries, and time periods
• NEWSLAB.WITHGOOGLE.COM
• News with journalist and distribution

GOOGLE SCHOLAR

• Known item searches now give one result instead of unrelated item
• Added suggested queries at bottom
• Sort by date was added as a new feature
• “MY Library” feature allows for saving articles

TITLES CHANGE BETWEEN ONLINE OR PRINT ARTICLES (How to Cite)

• Newspaper Article
• Online vs. Print
• Journal
• Preprint vs. Final
• Search Phrase from Text

DIVERSIFY SEARCH ENGINES

• Different Results
• Different Ranking

For those of you who are interested and want to stay updated on Google Searching New Search.googleblog.com

Conclusion

The implications of searches being made mainly from mobile devices is not an unique idea within itself - BUT , the notion that libraries in terms of reference may have to alter their searching methods from desktop to mobile is intriguing. It will be interesting to observe how mobile searches are further amplified beyond AMP and how libraries and staff can take advantage and adapt of this movement.