Google: Google Search

This page will describe the free Google search tool, describe the coverage, explain how to link the SXU reolver, and compare the tool to other multi-disciplinary search indexes.

DO NOT start your searches for academic information in Google; use one of our more precise and reliable search tools located within our Subject and Research Guides.

Google provides searching of keywords across a broad section of the WWW. It is a reasonable tool to search for popular and non-academic information.

Google Advanced search provides more precise searching options (i.e. language, region, domain name, etc.).

 Below we highlight some of the limitations of this tool.

• Google search results are ranked according to your previous search behaviors...you will not see a balanced and comprehensive set of search results; but rather a tailored set of results that fits your expected answers. 
•  Google skews results based upon commercial manipulation. Results demonstrate community implicit bias.   
•  Google does not search the complete free web; the indexing only searches three levels deep into web sites.
•  Google does not search the complete free web; the indexing drops older "stale" materials over time. Other major WWW search engines do not drop these historical materials. Try searching historical information using
  • DuckDuckGo or
  • Bing.
• This tool does not utilize subject headings or provide powerful ways to narrow search results (using facets); see the library tools below for alternative advanced search options for discovering academic materials.    

Google does not link the results to our locally purchased material. You must search through the library and/or use our resolver to obtain access to all the full-text articles that are available to you through our subscriptions.

IMAGE SEARCHING

You can find fair use images by starting with the Google Image Search Advanced page and selecting the free options on the bottom pull-down. You can input an image or image URL. Another image search option is CC search by Creative commons. Also consider the Smithsonian Museum digital gallery.

ACADEMIC INFORMATION SEARCHING

Google does not adequately search for academic materials (journal articles, peer reviewed encyclopedias and dictionaries, and reliable information sources). While Google Scholar provides free searching of a selection of the academic journal literature, you will need to set our link resolver to have access to all the full-text articles that are available to you through our subscriptions and more comprehensive and precise searches can be performed in our subject specific journal indexes.    

You should begin by selecting the appropriate Library search tool for your specific need:

• CREDO assists with preliminary research by searching in hundreds of reliable encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauruses, quotation databases, and subject-specific reference monograph titles, as well as over 200,000 images and audio files and nearly 100 videos. 
• News comes in many formats, and from many perspectives. To be sure you have a balanced perspective, think critically about the source, the accuracy, and the intention of each news resource.
•  Academic Search Complete provides searching across a core collection of approximately 800 multi-disciplinary journals, and offers immediate full text articles for most of the results. Good for basic searching.
• Scopus searches across a wide range of journal articles, and provides immediate links to the full text of many, while offering 3-day turnaround on those we need to borrow from other libraries. It also offers ranking of articles and journals by impact based upon citation patterns. You can follow a research front using this tool.
• More comprehensive searching is provided using our subject specific journal indexes.