Google 101 - When Not to Use Google
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Google this, Google that. Is it always the best search engine? No. Here are some reasons to use other search sites:
- Google simply doesn’t perform every search trick you might need. For example, it doesn’t search for certain file types, like audio or video clips. If you want to find those, try AlltheWeb.com, AltaVista.com or Dogpile.com. And Google doesn’t cluster results, either. Clustering is a hugely useful feature in which a search engine groups results by topic, as shown in Figure 1-14. Vivisimo.com is the clustering king. Nor does Google allow partial-word wildcards (page 24); try nearly any other search engine for that feature.
- Many sites perform deeper, more specialized searches than Google. For example, to find a person’s email address, you could try typing his or her name into Google. But if you get back random results with no clear email connection, you might try MetaEmailSearchAgent, or MESA, at http://mesa.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/. MESA simultaneously queries the major Web-based email search engines, like WhoWhere and Switchboard.
Similarly, Google can be a quick way to find out what an acronym stands for. Or it can return a morass of confusing and unrelated results. For example, when you search Google for "PDQ", you get links for cancer-related sites, printing, yachts, phones, and something called “Touch Free vehicle washes.” Even if you narrow it down by trying "PDQ stands for", you still get links about printing, dental work, catamarans, and the Physician Data Query. Pretty Damn Quick shows up, but it’s hard to tell how meaningful that is. Acronym Finder (www.acronymfinder.com), on the other hand, generates a tidy list of possibilities, with the most common at the top (Figure 1-15).
- Some topic-specific directories are simply more fine-tuned than Google’s regular full-text search. For example, you can click through the Google Directory to News→Newspapers→Regional→United States→California and come up with dozens of direct links to publications, plus subcategories for College, High School, Kern County, Los Angeles County, San Diego County, and a related category for Regional→North America→United States→California→News and Media.
But if you want more helpful subcategories and more papers, try NewsLink (http:// newslink.org), a directory for newspapers around the world. Under Newspapers→ By State→California, the site lists hundreds of papers grouped by Major Metro, Daily, Business, Non-Daily, Alterative, Specialty, Limited, Promotional, Campus, Association, and Inactive. The Glendale Gazette may be gone, but its memory lives on.
Still, Google has a ton of links for California papers, probably plenty for the average search. Which is a good example of why Google is nearly always a sound place to start, especially if you don’t know where else to turn.
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