Google Search Tools

Anyways, this blog entry is suppose to reflect on how the google tools that I've learned in class is suppose to help refine my searches. So the question given was:

How does the democratic and republican position on the "fiscal cliff" differ?

At first, I decided to type in the question the same way it was written on the board. However, there was a total of 32,600,000 results listed and although some of them were pretty relevant to the question posted above, a lot of the results were just a bunch of links that would direct me to websites that were not that informative.

In order to refine my search, at first, I decided to type in: democratic OR republican position on the "fiscal cliff". However, with not much luck, I ended up with 276,000,000 results which was even more than the first time I typed in this question. But when I typed the word "differ" at the end of the sentence, I was able to have 87,500,000 results. Still bummed with the number of searches, I decided to do something different by clicking on the search tools button and looking for results that were posted in the past 24 hours. As a result, after removing the word "differ", I was able to refine my search to 16,300 results in 0.16 seconds. Many of the first results that popped up were even relevant to my topic, but I wanted to refine my search even more.

I decided to refine my search even further by typing in "fiscal cliff" democrats AND republicans and clicked under the discussion button. Although there wasn't as much results as I expected, I ended up with more than the previous search with a total of 57,500 results in 0.42 seconds. However, I did end up with a lot of relevant information that were easy to understand. Leaving how the question is typed in the search engine, I decided to click on the video button hoping there would be less results. But this only led to 22,000,000 results posted. But just like the previous search, many of the results were relevant and since I'm more of a visual learner, the videos, from what they are titled, seemed as if it can answer my question easily.

I then tried searching "fiscal cliff" democrats republicans positions under the books category. However, although I was able to refine my search to 344 results in 0.39 seconds, many of the, or mostly all of them, were either not that relevant to my topic or it seemed as if I wouldn't understand it if I was really going to read the books.

Not being able to refine my research I hoped I would do, I decided to type in: "fiscal cliff" ~democrats republican. Although there were 65,900 results that popped up in 0.21 seconds, most of the results were pretty relevant. A lot of the topics included both the democrat and republican sides on the issue which makes it much easier for me to answer the question.

In the end, I found out that the discussions button is the one that actually helped me the most. I also found out that refining my search to results that were posted in the last 24 hours also helped me. Moreover, for me personally, although I was able to refine my search to as little as 344 results, many of them didn't really help me. I felt more comfortable with the video, along with the discussion results, because although there was a lot, many of the results actually answered my topic.