Chris Nolan Presentation

I learned a lot about Google from Chris Nolan's presentation. I use Google multiple times per day, yet I never really knew much about it other than it got me results pertinent to my search request. I found out how Google prioritizes its search results—it searches for key words in the title, counts the number of links which lead to a certain site (noting the importance of the site which links to the site in question), and also notes the frequency of words and the proximity of words to one another (if a compound key word search). I also found out that you can put limitations on your searches such as searching for exact words/phrases, excluding certain words or phrases, types of websites (.gov, .org, .edu, country codes, ect.), language, file type, dates, and usage rights. Google also offers Google Cached, which highlights key words you used in your search, allows you to see previous versions of web pages (as long as Google has not updated their data base), and allows you to view a website if it is down. I always use Google for projects; however, I always had to sift through a bunch of non-academic things. Chris Nolan taught us that Google Scholar limits search results to academic information while using the same ranking system as the regular Google page. The thing that surprised me was that Stephen Colbert made “Elephant” on Wikipedia a controversial article. I knew that Wikipedia could be altered by anyone and that the information may not be reliable, but that was a funny use of the website.