Trust Me - I'm Google

Trust me - I’m

Presented by Karen Blakeman

[email protected] http://www.rba.co.uk/ (or just Google me!)

Exeter Library & Information Providers Group

14th September 2011, Devon and Exeter Institution

This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

mailto:[email protected]

Google helped get me here today

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Heed Google’s advice: what might seem like a quiet country lane could turn out to be a pavement-less road used by car driving commuters for F1 practice!

Checks journey fuel costs for you


Disloyal thought #1: Use Petrolprices.com to check fuel prices

Plans your journey by public transport (sort of)


No trains? Disloyal thought #2: ignore Google Transit and go direct to http://traveline.info/

Google knows exactly where I am


Disloyal thought #3: ignore Google and manually change your location desired town or UK as a whole


XGoogle Property is no more. Disloyal thought #4: suggest to Google that it tells people about new services and when they‘re going to discontinue them?

Google reminds me I have to book a hotel even after the event...


... and even when I’m not on Google



Disloyal thought #5: opt out of ad preferences at http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ (Opt out of other targeted advertising networks at http://www.networkadvertising.org/)

But what about search? Lots of new goodies in the results page menu


Want a different perspective? Try translated foreign pages


Ooops!

You are allowed to add and choose your own language

Preview


Google Finance keeps on top of the stock markets


(Slightly) Disloyal thought #6: you might want to take a look at Yahoo Finance as well

Google Scholar?

• No source list, not comprehensive and omits many key scientific publications

• Both peer-reviewed and un-reviewed articles, pre-prints, institutional repositories, references to books, citations

• Does not use publishers’ meta data

• Author search unreliable, search on year of publication unreliable

• Sometimes does weird things with your search terms

• Peter Jasco - Google Scholar's Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6698580.html


Disloyal thought #7: Try http://academic.research.microsoft.com/, specialist search engines and databases

Up to the minute(?) statistics - Public Data Explorer


Disloyal thought #8: check the source of the datasets to see if there is more up to date information (there probably is)

Google sorts out mobile templates for your blog


Decluttering?


Where’s Advanced search gone?

Disloyal thought #9: you don’t have to use the advanced search screen – learn to use the commands instead

Google is a tease


X X

X All gone!

Google Realtime (Twitter)


XDisloyal thought number #10 : don’t get too attached to anything on Google. Stuff can disappear without warning

Google Labs is going


Official Google Blog: More wood behind fewer arrows http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-fewer-arrows.html

Don’t worry – you don’t have to think for yourself anymoreEnter Google Instant (and the rest)


Only displays10 results on your results page. Disloyal thought #11: switch off Google Instant under Search Preferences (under the cog wheel in upper right hand corner of the screen)

Google knows best

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Hewish mild No “did you mean” or “search instead for”

First result correct.Google assumes typing error for the rest - Jewish mild

More searches on beer over the next few days and Google decides I really do want Hewish mild

Disloyal thought #12: Use + signs before words to force an exact match or quote marks around phrases e.g. “Hewish mild”

Google really does know best


=

Google has given up trying to persuade US and UK users but...

Google.cz Google.de

Google is starting to do its own thing:

• assuming typos without giving you the option to refuse the correction

• looking for obscure variations and synonyms

• ignoring ‘+’ signs

• ignoring quotation marks around phrases

• not including all of your terms in the search

And what I see on my screen for a search is not what you’ll see on yours for the same search


Google can seriously damage your news (disloyal thought #13)

• Experiment by Mary Ellen Bates

• Is Google really filtering my news? - Librarian of Fortune

– http://www.librarianoffortune.com/librarian_of_fortune/2011/09/is-

google-really-filtering-my-news.html

• Highlights

– More than a quarter of the stories showed up in only one

searcher’s results

– Almost one in five searchers saw a story that no one else saw

– Only 12% of searchers saw the same three stories in the same

order


Google knows us so well


Google personalises and tailors your results depending on your location, computer, browser, past searches, what you have looked at in the past, your +1s, your Google+ account, your other social networks, what you had for breakfast.... and anything else it can find by rummaging around in your Google account.

(Seriously) disloyal thoughts ...

#14: check your Google account dashboard (http://www.google.com/dashboard/) and remove unnecessary stuff

#15: disable web history (‘signed out’ web history under the cog wheel in the upper right hand corner of the Google screen, web history in the dashboard of your Google account) ....but it might work for you

#16: sign out of your Google account when searching

#17: add &pws=0 to the end of your search URL (won’t remove localisation)

#18: Use Chrome Incognito mode


REBEL!

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Suffering withdrawal symptoms?


Decide which sites you want to search and design your own Google custom search engine

Still can’t live without Google?

Learn as much as possible about how Google operates

Learn how to use the Google search features and commands to get Google to search the way you want it to (OK – it won’t always work!)

Keep up to date with what Google is doing ... or not doing


“Remember, we put the ogle in Google”


Don’t be evil? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouof1OzhL8k

Trust Me - I'm Google

Technology

Transcript of Trust Me - I'm Google