"YOUR search history contains some of the most personal information you will ever reveal online: your health, mental state, interests, travel locations, fears and shopping habits.
And that is information most people would want to keep private. Unfortunately, your web searches are carefully tracked and saved in databases, where the information can be used for almost anything, including highly targeted advertising and price discrimination based on your data profile."
YouTube video which explains clearly some of the factors and processes Google uses to return search results.
And they do all that in under a second?! Amazing!!
"It's Google's world, we're just teaching in it. Now, we can use it a little more easily. With classes, homework, and projects-not to mention your social life-time is truly at a premium for all teachers, so why not take advantage of the wide world that Google has to offer? From super-effective search tricks to Google tools specifically for education to tricks and tips for using Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, these tricks will surely save you some precious time."
Search engines like Google are essential tools for every Internet work. But are they the best place to search anything? A post that considers the statement "a manual selection of content is more useful in some situation"
"A little over a year ago, Google officially changed the name of its Docs app to Drive and gave users cloud storage to compete with Dropbox. While so far the search giant has yet to dethrone the incumbent, the service does have one distinct advantage over the competition: a wide array of extensions and apps that integrate directly into the service."
"Students, teachers and the public turn to their librarians for help researching everything from technology to genealogy to homework help and lesson plans. Even if your library is equipped with subscriptions and memberships to top of the line databases and online journals, you've probably had to get creative during a patron's requested search for something unfamiliar."
"We aim to provide a great experience for our users and have developed over 200 signals to ensure our search algorithms deliver the best possible results. Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily-whether it's a song previewed on NPR's music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.
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DuckDuckGo illustrated guide is useful for class and staffroom discussion. Run some of the tests with your students and compare results - from home and from school, and from different search engines.
"The day when your hat can extrapolate your mood from your brain activity and make a spa appointment on your behalf may not be far away. The next big thing in the digital world won't be a better way for you to find something. If a confluence of capabilities now on the horizon bears fruit, the next big thing is that information will find you. Welcome to contextual search, a world where devices from your phone to your appliances will join forces in the background to make your life easier automatically."
This excellent site begins with an overview of the WWW before looking more closely at Search with annotated lists of search tools and techniques as well as an extended discussion on the Deep Web and keeping current.
From Google, this survey is designed to gain insights into how consumers use the Internet on their smartphones. It contains:
* Facts and figures about smartphone adoption and usage
* Internet usage in general, search, video, social networking, mobile advertising and m-commerce behaviour via smartphones
* This country report is part of a global smartphone study conducted in multiple countries. Visit OurMobilePlanet.com for
access to additional tools and data
"Course Builder is our experimental first step in the world of online education. It packages the software and technology we used to build our Power Searching with Google online course. We hope you will use it to create your own online courses, whether they're for 10 students or 100,000 students. You might want to create anything from an entire high school or university offering to a short how-to course on your favorite topic."