Google search experience: assessment and analysis

¶ … Google Search Experience

Assessment of Google Book Search using the phrase "Tenured faculty & Post-tenure review models" using the exact phrase search option first, and second with inclusive or Boolean search was completed. To fully evaluate this search engine the Search was defined for books that had Full view only as an option. To ensure there were a sufficient number of results the All Content option was chosen. The results indicate that Google has quickly been able to arbitrate the use of online book content after having been sued by the Author's Guild for copyright infringement (Samuelson, 2009). Google Book Search has actually become more valuable after the settlement was completed. The search of the phrase "Tenured faculty & Post-tenure review models" using an exact match of the phrase yields three books two of which have useful frameworks and models easily accessible. The use of the search option for all books and all contents with a Boolean representation of the search phrase yields 177 books, and there is a relative level of relevancy to each relative to the search criteria. The Google Books Search is exceptional in its ability to target specific publications and offer citation assistance as well.

Using Google Scholar is comparable in many respects to using EBSCO Host, ProQuest or Lexis/Nexis from a navigational and content standpoint. Google Scholar provides 1,130 documents that fit the Boolean search criteria of "Tenured faculty & Post-tenure review models" and none when the exact phrase is used. This is consistent with ProQuest, which returns non-matching documents when the exact phrase "Tenured faculty & Post-tenure review models" is entered as an exact match in its search engine as well. The Google Scholar search engine appears more comprehensive in scope relative to ProQuest as well. This is attributable to the greater number of courses Google indexes from an academic standpoint to gain this data. While ProQuest does not have as much content accessible using Boolean search parameters as Google Scholar, of the documents it indexes, a higher percentage of them are accessible. There is also a greater level of flexibility in how citations are downloaded on ProQuest relative to Google Scholar. Support for APA, AMA, Turabian, and Harvard formats is available on ProQuest for example and not available on Google Scholar. This can be a significant time saving feature when larger papers are being researched.

When a Boolean search was completed using the Google U.S. Government Search, 58,200 documents were found, and like Google Scholar, when the exact search term "Tenured faculty & Post-tenure review models" was used, no matches were found.