The Joy of Search: A Google Insider's Guide to Going Beyond the Basics
The MIT Press, 2019
How to be a great online searcher, demonstrated with step-by-step searches for answers to a series of intriguing questions (for example, “Is that plant poisonous?”).
We all know how to look up something online by typing words into a search engine. We do this so often that we have made the most famous search engine a verb: we Google it?“ Japan population” or “Nobel Peace Prize” or “poison ivy” or whatever we want to know. But knowing how to Google something doesn't make us search experts; there's much more we can do to access the massive collective knowledge available online. In The Joy of Search, Daniel Russell shows us how to be great online researchers. We don't have to be computer geeks or a scholar searching out obscure facts; we just need to know some basic methods. Russell demonstrates these methods with step-by-step searches for answers to a series of intriguing questions from “what is the wrong side of a towel?” to “what is the most likely way you will die?” Along the way, readers will discover essential tools for effective online searches and learn some fascinating facts and interesting stories.
Russell explains how to frame search queries so they will yield information and describes the best ways to use such resources as Google Earth, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, and Wikimedia. He shows when to put search terms in double quotes, how to use the operator (*), why metadata is important, and how to triangulate information from multiple sources. By the end of this engaging journey of discovering, readers will have the definitive answer to why the best online searches involve more than typing a few words into Google.
Reviews:
“As Dan Russell travels the world, he is constantly observing and questioning. His trick is to discover the clues and then to know how to use searching techniques to solve the mystery. Every chapter is a fascinating journey where we learn interesting things about the world, and, incidentally, how to become master searchers ourselves.”
—Don Norman, Professor and Director, Design Lab, University of California, San Diego; author of The Design of Everyday Things
“Everything you ever need to know about search, but that you never asked because you never thought these things were even possible."
—Vint Cerf, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google since October 2005
—Esther Wojcicki, Founder, Media Arts Program at Palo Alto High School; Vice Chair of Creative Commons; journalist for the Huffington Post
“From killer lakes to Mudejar stars, you'll learn the best ways to scratch your itch of curiosity. Russell shows how important research is and how to upgrade your research skills for the internet era.”
—Matt Cutts, creator of the first family-safe filters for search engines at Google; staff member at the U.S. Digital Service