3. General tips
• Everything is searchable.
• Nothing stays constant on the web.
• Control + F is very useful.
• Advanced Search and Preferences are available with each
product.
• RSS is also available.
• Just about every product has a team blog.
7. Start Your Engines Which Link Do I Follow? Believe It or Not?
The Keys to Search City Your Search Tool Box Advanced Search Squad
Quick Finds Advanced Advantage Search Summit
15. Topic: Understanding Search What do your search
results say?
Can you assign a description to each numeral
above?
16. Topic: Understanding Search What do your search
results say?
1. The title: The first line of any search result is the title of the webpage.
2. The snippet: A description of or an excerpt from the webpage.
3. The URL: The webpage's address.
4. Cached link: A link to an earlier version of this page. Click here if the page
you wanted isn't available.
19. Topic: Understanding Search What link should I
follow?
What do these concepts and search features mean?
How can they help you decide which link to follow?
• Page rank and index
• Statistics bar
• Dictionary definitions
• Search results
• Sponsored Links
discussion
20. Topic: Understanding Search What link should I
follow?
Organic (or natural) search Sponsored Links
results (Advertising)
21. Topic: Understanding Search What link should I
follow?
What do these search features mean?
How can they help you decide which link to follow?
• Search Results
• Sponsored Links
discussion
22. Topic: Understanding Search What do these
links tell us?
Prediction
Before you click on the search result link, make an
initial judgment:
How do I know if this information source valid?
• Check the URL
• Read the domain
• Analysis of the snippet
• Popularity (statistics)
• Other - related links, sponsored links etc
discussion
26. Tips
Topic: Understanding Search
• Get multiple answers.
• Always check your
Assessing Credibility
answers.
What is the diameter of the earth?
27. Tip
Topic: Understanding Search Get multiple answers.
Search with obvious terms: [ diameter of the earth ]
But Get multiple answers by looking at different sites.
Depending on which one you choose, you’ll get somewhat
different answers!
• Site #1: 7,926.41 miles
• Site #2: 12,756 km
• Site #3: 12,756.3 km
• Site #4: 7,900 miles
What are some possible reasons for the differences?
Practice
28. ► Credibility
• We all want to teach it… but how?
• Credibility = trustworthiness + expertise
o Oh yeah… it’s also socially contextualized: What’s
credible to you might not be credible to another social
group.
• A large part of learning how to judge as credible is…
o What does your social group recognize as credible?
A large part of this is name recognition.
NYTimes v. Fox v. CNN…
Folger Shakespeare Library v. Renaissance Pleasure Faire v.
LARPers. …
29. How else do you judge
Topic: Understanding Search the credibility of
Assessing Credibility a web page?
Strategies to determine trustworthy and expertise:
• The URL (Is it from a place you’ve heard of before?)
• Type of page (Is it someone’s personal page? e.g., Geocities, aol.com)
• Type of domain (.eduis more believable than many others)
• Where (Is it hosted in another country? e.g., .ru.cn.izetc.)
• Check the “About” section. (Is the web page affiliated with a place you’ve
heard?)
• Is there a date and author?
• Look up the author in Google (usually need to use double quotes)
• Why was the page put on the web? (to inform?, to convince? who's point
of view?)
* Tips by Daniel M. Russell, Google Search Quality Team
30. Tip
Topic: Understanding Search
Always check your
answers
How can you tell if something is credible?
Believe it or not
Use Google search to complete the following test on one or
more of your search results pages about the diameter of the
earth:
Check links pointing TO the page:
use: [ link: <URL> ], e.g [ link:www.ufos-alien.uk ]
Check the page and site on Alexa.com
use: www.alexa.com – look on the “Site overview” and “Traffic”
Check links pointing OUT from the page:
• use: www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/outbound-links.html
31.
32.
33.
34. Believe it or not?
Did NASA fake the moon landing?
Advanced
35. Topic: Understanding Search
Did NASA fake the moon landing?
Conduct the search below (use those exact terms):
Practice
36. Example:
Did NASA fake the moon landing?
• [ lunar landing hoax ]
• Click on first result:
www.ufosaliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html
37. Name recognition is
Topic: Understanding Search important to assessing
credibility
If you know something about the
authors is it more believeable?
38. Heuristics to check credibility
• Look at the contact info for website
o usually on the home page, not a deep linked page
• Look at ads that run on the site
o what do they tell you about the content / operator?
• Use the link operator:
[ link:www.ufos-aliens.co.uk ]
to see what other web sites link to this site
39. Find out who owns the site…
• [ whois ufos-aliens.co.uk ] – handy Google Onebox
• www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
• www.internic.net/ -- look under “Whois Search
Results”
Report for:
ufos-aliens.co.uk
40.
41. Looking for plagarism
• This is a perfect use of double quote:
o Look for a “low probability phrase or sentence”
o That is, something that seems unique and NOT likely to
be a common phrase that would occur naturally
• Note that many low-quality sites completely copy
content
o Strategy: Look for duplicated content
• Note that many times an inaccurate story will be
duplicated from news-story to news-story.
(Also true for low-quality email messages that spread rumors.)
42. • Example from:
http://www.indiana.edu/~istd/examples.html
Common
phrase
Uncommon
phrase
[ “first technology was the primitive
modes” ]
48. Tips for selecting
Topic: Search Techniques
keywords
Think how the
1
Describe what you
2
page you are
need with as few
looking for will
terms as possible.
be written.
Use the words
3
that are most Choose
4
likely to appear descriptive
on the page. words.
49. How to find those
Topic: Search Techniques perfect "keys"
1. What is it I’m looking for? (think about common keywords)
2. How would someone else talk about it? (what words would they use? how
would THEY describe it?)
3. Which of those terms would be most common?
4. Which of those terms would be very specialized to this topic?
5. What kind of thing would make me happy? (do I want a single web page, a
definition, a collection, an image.... or …?)
You try it!
50. Keyword Search
Topic: Search Techniques Challenge
Select one class topic_____________________
In teams, brainstorm 5 keywords for topic
Quickly place keywords into a Google Form (or write down)
Compare choices of keywords between the teams
Vote for the best
Now try them in the search box.
54. How should I search?
Topic: Search Techniques
Search tools: What matters / What doesn't matter
1.Brainstorm keywords
2.Prioritize keywords to use first
3.Reorder keywords / add more keywords
4.Try capitalization variations and punctuation
discussion
55. What if I don't know much
Topic: Search Techniques about my topic?
Search tools: Spell check and Did you mean?
discussion
56. Try some variations to
Topic: Search Techniques your search terms
Search tools: Synonyms and the "~" tilde operator
Try this first: [car engine]
Then try: [~car engine]
discussion
57. Excluding words from a
Topic: Search Techniques search
salsa recipe -tomatoes
Don't forget: No
space between the
minus and the
word to exclude! discussion
58. Seeing results only for an
Topic: Search Techniques exact phrase
"XXX YYY ZZZ"
Note: Quotations are
rarely needed! Used them
only when absolutely
necessary.
64. What media do you see in
Topic: Universal Search these search results?
discussion
What are the benefits of
blending different kinds of
results in search results?
77. Summary
• exclusion: use minus symbol without a space in front of a
search term, e.g salsa -dance
• numeric range: use two numeric parameters with two dots
in between, e.g. nobel peace prize winners 1980..2009
• related: use related: plus the url of a web site, e.g
related:nytimes.com
81. More Operators
Topic: Advanced Search
Try the following searches on Google ...
inurl:nanotechnology
intitle:nanotechnology
What do the inurl and intitle operators do?
107. The REAL takeaway..
• Have a research stance…
• Make research be a part of everything you do
• Teach this attitude to your students
• Plan on learning new skills
o Nothing stays constant on the web
o Search engines continually improving
o New search tools / new
o Get an Alert for the Official Google Blog
(easiest way to stay up-to-date on our not-very-well advertised
features)
Go over why Search is&#xA0; important for literacy skills
Closing slide
Discuss lesson authoring, importance of teaching search in the classroom and lesson URLs
Discuss structure of lessons - Each lesson comes with a&#xA0;
Overview,
Objectives
materials
Instructions
Related links
Evaluation
Standards &
presentation you can use for students
&#xA0;
You can jump in where you want and mix & match.
First set of three lessons
&#xA0;
Understanding search engines and how they work
Lesson A1 -&#xA0;
When to teach - at beginning of school year or beginning of first search project
Highlights - Reading Snipits
&#xA0;
Evaluation - Write your own snipt
Lesson A2
When to teach - when students are perplexed as they search or taking up too much time in the search process
Highlights - How does Google Work?
&#xA0;
Evaluation - students create their own search videos
&#xA0;Lesson A3
When to teach - when you ask students for a bibliography or a question comes up about the validity of a source.
Highlights - Looking a hoax sites, credibility and trustworthyness.
&#xA0;
Evaluation - students look at and then invent hoax sites.
Strategies to determine trustworthy and expertise:&#xA0;
The URL (Is it from a place you&#x2019;ve heard of before?)
Type of page (Is it someone&#x2019;s personal page? e.g., Geocities, aol.com)
Type of domain (.eduis more believable than many others)&#xA0;
Where (Is it hosted in another country? &#xA0;e.g., .ru.cn.izetc.)&#xA0;
Check the &#x201C;About&#x201D; section. (Is the web page affiliated with a place you&#x2019;ve heard?)
Is there a date and author?
Look up the author in Google (usually need to use double quotes)
Why was the page put on the web? (to inform?, to convince? who's point of view?)
Level 2 - three lessons
Focusing on Key word seaching
Lesson B2
When to teach - students have big search project or paper
Highlights - Wonderwheel and synonyms
&#xA0;
Evaluation - find a topic and do the 5 step process
Lesson B3
When to teach - with a classroom inquiry or media project
Highlights -Options in Google Search
&#xA0;
Evaluation - fore topmast studding sail - mast challenge
Third set of lessons focusing on tools, tips and techniques
Lesson C1
When to teach -When the students need quick and specific tips
Highlights - a scavenger hunt
&#xA0;
Evaluation - search bingo
15 Second Search Videos:
&#xA0;
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B3A7CCFD7CD5CF09
Or:
http://bit.ly/15second
Lesson C2
When to teach - when students need to do query refinements
Highlights - Related searches
&#xA0;
Evaluation - Search Features product produced to teach the class about each feature.
&#xA0;
&#xA0;
&#xA0;
&#xA0;
&#xA0;
&#xA0;
Lesson c3
Long term project based learning
Highlights -usage rights, file type
&#xA0;
Evaluation - analyze a trend
Fun tips for the audience
Show Image swirl
http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/