College Students Don't Know How Google Works

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A recent study found that, although they use it often, college students don't really understand how Google works.

The prevalence of Google in student research is well-documented, but the Illinois researchers found something they did not expect: students were not very good at using Google. They were basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results. Consequently, the students did not know how to build a search that would return good sources.
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I just plug in random stuff till i get what i'm looking for.

sometimes I find my self typing in the full question expecting google to answer for me? haha
 
LOLWUT?


Yeah, I agree JSTOR sucks. I use Sage, PROQUEST or EBSCO. Now if only I have access to Project Muse...
 
pfff theres plenty of people on this board (who should know better) who don tknow how to use google
 
I'm probably mistaken, years ago i received better hits on my search. Iv;e learned as an example not to start my question with a Who What Where or Why. Seems like one company has the rights to those queries. What ever happened to the programs that came out in the early years of the internet, such as Archie, Veronica. If I remember they were designed to take you to a university where you could do the research and get your answers. Will someone jump in a give me a refresher.
 
Google (and other search engines, but seemingly to a lesser extent) have become so infected with crappy links in the top resutls from contect farms that this is not really surprising.
 
Katalysis said:
Google (and other search engines, but seemingly to a lesser extent) have become so infected with crappy links in the top resutls from contect farms that this is not really surprising.
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Corrected "Content Farms" that the word I was looking for.
 
These are the same people that do not know how the engine in their car operates at a basic level without looking it up, and even then they can only recite it, not understand it.

The average person is not even average. No news.
 
Trimlock said:
I just plug in random stuff till i get what i'm looking for.

sometimes I find my self typing in the full question expecting google to answer for me? haha
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same here. haha.

i know they have advanced search functions and syntax. but i never bother to learn them.
 
That was a GREAT article. I even learned a new word, 'satisfice.' From many of the comments, people only read the title of this thread and totally missed the underlying theme that the majority of students today do not know how to use a library.
 
schizrade said:
These are the same people that do not know how the engine in their car operates at a basic level without looking it up, and even then they can only recite it, not understand it.

The average person is not even average. No news.
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So much win in this post.

Its quite sad to see so many technology illiterate people in this world when our dependance on electronics is only increasing. The "average" person these days is just a best buy / Reality tv / clueless twitts. Don't care to understand how anything works or why I call them the "apple culture".
 
Well, I have to say that Google really isn't helping matters. Lately their search quality has started to decrease. Their "PageRank" system seems to be giving higher and higher priorities to pages that other pages which have one of the search terms link to. If I search for a search term, I want THAT term in the page I search for, not a page that doesn't actually have it... (If I wanted a page that didn't have it, I'd tell the search to exclude that search term!) I understand the theory behind it, but the practice is search results that more and more frequently have nothing to do with what you actually searched for... Perhaps it really IS a Pidgeon Rank system. d-: (It's starting to reach that sort of "intelligent searching" level anyway.)

That said, once you learn how to properly use the tools it gives you, quotes for exact searches, figure out the right search terms to get the results you need, and etc, generally Google (or any search engine really) can be a handy tool, but if you don't utilize these -- if you just type in a question or whatever -- then it could become pretty worthless sometimes. I guess to some extent experience is required, but by the time I was in college I was at least decently adept at using Google. I could accept students in, say, middle school having problems, but these days they should already be figuring things out while they're in high school. Do we need classes that teach search engine utilization or something? Lol, that's an elective many would surely take to fill their optional requirements I'd bet.
 
If those scholarly search engines didn't suck so much, I'd think they get more use... but using them gave me a headache. I do find a number of things on them though. But I usually use google to look for more if the scholar ones don't get me what I need... sides google has a scholar search too, though most of it is not free, it does point you to the right direction, like article names.
 
What's hard about Google? It's all in making a good mix of exact phrases in quotation marks and independent keywords.
 
Topaz said:
What's hard about Google? It's all in making a good mix of exact phrases in quotation marks and independent keywords.
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Exactly... I find myself being labelled "googleer search master" because some people cannot seem to find what they are looking for.

I think some people, it just doesn't sink in when I tell them how to google stuff better... some think its even a joke when I say that. It's not... it's kind of a skill to find stuff quickly, if you ask me. It saves times, money, and everything if you boil it down.

I guess it's like car mechanics to some people... they just can't ever sink in how to properly manipulate such an easy mechanical tool.

Put words, without "A" or "is" ... and sometimes, yes typing out a question in quotes give you the exact answer you want usually, without even having to click the link above the description!
 
how is this different from people doesn't know how their cars work?.. washer? microwave? air conditioner? [anything goes here]?

it's a search engine, it searches the web for the answer, fast and accurate.. that is all we care about. To majority of the people on this planet, how it works isn't a tiny bit interesting..
 
My Google-fu is strong. just have to use relevant words to the subject you are looking for. never have needed to use quotes.
 
The reality is no one knows how google works from one day to another because they change their search engine logic almost that often.
 
I type in the words I am interested in and get plenty of porn returned. Google seems to work fine for me. I don't care how it works... :D
 
schizrade said:
These are the same people that do not know how the engine in their car operates at a basic level without looking it up, and even then they can only recite it, not understand it.
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Many of the young people in college are very good at any of the four: Suck, Squish, Bang, Blow. Plenty of questionable websites out there advertising as such.
 
And yes you need to understand HOW people will ask a question to figure how to get the results your looking for. I also wish they had a way to only show returns from forums. Alot of the good answers come from forums now-a-days as many people have abandoned making personal webpages.....something so 20th century :rolleyes:
 
I agree. Nobody [in real life] Googles anything, and when they do, I often overhear complaints about not being able to find simple things.

I grew up on the internet starting at around age 6 during ~1996, and grew up with Google. I realize now that using Google can indeed be a skill, because it involves having used Google for so long and molding to its search algorithms that I naturally and instinctively know just the right keywords to use in searches to find exactly what I want on the first page. Usually, in most cases, if your result isn't in the very first page you searched wrong.
 
EDIT: Now likewise, JSTOR might require a skill. The reason I hate those things is because they don't really even have a search algorithm and take a more literal approach to searching, which is to include anything that even contains a single mention of said keyword. Returns up to hundreds of thousands of irrelevant results. I wish everything used Google.
 
Cerulean said:
I agree. Nobody [in real life] Googles anything, and when they do, I often overhear complaints about not being able to find simple things.

I grew up on the internet starting at around age 6 during ~1996, and grew up with Google. I realize now that using Google can indeed be a skill, because it involves having used Google for so long and molding to its search algorithms that I naturally and instinctively know just the right keywords to use in searches to find exactly what I want on the first page. Usually, in most cases, if your result isn't in the very first page you searched wrong.
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If you've been on the interspace for that long, you shouldn't need to search for anything. Google Moses.
 
IF i don't know exactly how something works I: don't use it until I know what it is doing.
 
It doesn't bother me that most people don't know how Google works

It DOES bother me that most people don't know how to properly use Google using even basic search commands like "phrase" and -
 
Uncle said:
Corrected "Content Farms" that the word I was looking for.
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And Google has been trying to fix that. I agree it is a big issue, and the first ten results should always be unique relevant content.

Webmasters now fear getting panda slapped. Granted it isn't perfect, and needs work to not effect good sites, but at least its an attempt.
 
Words go in, web sites come out

fermat-cant-explain-360x250.jpg


You can't explain that!
 
Hell. That's nothing. I know most people have no understand of basic human physiology. I assume everyone relies on their mind and body everyday.

Not taking a higher stand or anything but not knowing how a micowave or Google works? People don't even know how their own heart or lungs work.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
Its quite sad to see so many technology illiterate people in this world when our dependance on electronics is only increasing. The "average" person these days is just a best buy / Reality tv / clueless twitts. Don't care to understand how anything works or why I call them the "apple culture".
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Eh, my guess is even the average person on these forums doesn't know how a computer works. They know how to use them, but not how they work beyond an extremely superficial understanding.

This should be ok though - trying to understand everything is a pretty huge and pointless thing to do.
 
Liver said:
Hell. That's nothing. I know most people have no understand of basic human physiology. I assume everyone relies on their mind and body everyday.

Not taking a higher stand or anything but not knowing how a micowave or Google works? People don't even know how their own heart or lungs work.
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+1

In addition to understanding human physiology, I'm really into DIY psychobehavioral understanding/learning/observing/thinking. :p I've learned a lot just from observing people for about 7-8 years, their body language, the way they cloth, the way they talk, their eyes, facial expressions, emotions, tiny "insignificant" details in everything, patterns, the way they think, the way they are around others, the way they are around certain species/genders and how others affect others, etcetera.
 
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