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Now you see it, now you don’t
April is going to be a very busy month for me this year. As well as speaking at conferences I am also giving six full day workshops so am having to prepare the presentations, handouts and notes well in advance. When it comes to the Google sessions the material the delegates receive never matches exactly what they see on their screens during the practicals.
How search works – sort of
Google has put together a site showing how Google search works ( http://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/ ). The main page is a scrolling animated graphic that just gives you some elementary facts but there are links to more detailed information and videos on the main topics of crawling and indexing, the searching and ranking algorithms, fighting spam and Google’s general policies. They are a useful set of pages for anyone who does not already know the basics of how Google works, but if you are looking for something that tells you how to get sensible results from Google you’ll be disappointed.Google Scholar author fail
Eight months after setting up my Google Scholar author profile and “claiming” my papers I have received my first alert. If you only use Google Scholar ( http://scholar.google.com/ ) to search for papers you may not be aware that if you have published papers you can set up a Google Scholar author profile and add those papers to your profile.
Not what you expect is it? However, it happens to be true. Google recently revamped the way in which they display images on the screen to make it easy and quicker to view them.
Google makes it easier for kids to find porn
Google search is about to get even more personal – possibly. If you are signed in to your Google account and search Google.com, Google includes and highlights content from people in your networks. This has been available for some time but a couple of months ago Google launched a field trial that added your Gmail to the search mix, and a few days ago they added documents from Drive.
Google search to get more personal
Can librarians trust resources found on Google Scholar? Yes… and no.
Many librarians are still unwilling to fully embrace Google Scholar as a resource. Michelle C.
Noticed anything different about your Google results recently? It might be down to the fact that instead of seeing 10 results on the screen, you're now quite probably only seeing 7. I really don't see the point of doing this, although their reasoning is that if the search is specific enough to warrant less results, that's what you'll get.
Google reducing the number of search results
Yet another irritating Google feature
There was a time when Google would aggregate pages from the same website in your search results.Beating Google into submission – top tips
Oh what fun we had beating Google into submission on June 28th! This advanced Google workshop was held at Reading University and covered some of the new goings on at Google (no more ‘ANDing’ for search terms, personalisation of results) as well as the some of the established techniques for making Google behave itself. The following is what the group came up with at the end of the day as their collaborative top tips for persuading Google to run your search the way yo u want it run.How Much Do Social Signals Play Into Google Rankings?
If there's been one thing that tends to get me going, it's when people in the industry start talking about social signals.Google looks as though it's returning to its roots of search with the introduction of the Knowledge Graph.
Google Knowledge Graph
Google+ hangouts for libraries
Google+ hangouts have many benefits for a library or information service, and I thought it was time to take a little more of a look at what the functionality is, together with ways in which it can be used.After a date, a pitch or a job interview, there's a good chance you're going to get Googled. Online reputation manager BrandYourself now helps you figure out who is searching for your name.