Part 5.2
Search Index/Google

Using Google

Google has a very simple interface. It's whole purpose it to search the internet, so when you go to Google, you only see a keyword text box (1) and two buttons: Google Search (2) and I'm Feeling Lucky (3).
[Note: the picture has been reduced for this tutorial].

To enter a query into Google, just type in a few keywords and click on the Google Search button for a list of relevant results. That's it! Google is very easy to use.

Google performs "and" queries by default, which means it only looks for pages that has all the keywords (like White AND House). Google only returns those pages that include all of the search terms. To narrow a search further, just include more terms. Google also automatically prefers pages in which the query terms are in close proximity.

Simple Search

To search for Civil War Generals, simply type "Civil War Generals" in the box and click Google Search

Google returns 10 links at a time as a default. Here is an example of the results returned from our example search.

At the top is your search querry, the two search buttons, and a pulldown menu to change the number of results returned per page (1). If you want more results per page, just change the number in the pulldown menu and search again.

Next you see some statistics (2): an approximate of the number of pages that contain the keywords, how many pages are shown on this page, and how long the search took. Also, Google gives you a link to read about how to interpret the results. This is a nice feature; Google will always try to explain what you are seeing.

The main part of the page contains the results of the search (3), ranked by relivance. We'll go in to more detail about the results on the next page.

Finally, at the bottom is a nice navagation system (4). You can go to the next page, a previous page, or jump between pages. Also at the bottom is a place to perform another Google search.

Let's look at the search results in more detail.