Chris Nolan

Something I thought was interesting about Chris Nolan's talk was how extensive Google is when it conducts its searches. Not only does Google look at the search keywords to find relevant websites, but it takes into consideration word order, how frequently the sites are visited, if the words are in the title of the web page, and how frequently the site is linked to other pages. Word order is important because "global warming" would bring up very different results than "warming globe". The popularity of the sites is significant also because if a lot of people visit the site, then it must have some kind of valuable information. If the words are in the title of the webpage, the article or page is probably dedicated to that topic, and the site is probably useful for whatever you are searching for. I had not thought about how relevant the site would be if it is linked to other sites. This last point was the most surprising to me. It is very logical, but not something that I had considered before Chris's presentation. I always use Google and I never knew that the search engine took all this kind of information into account when it searches the web. Also, the preferences in the advanced search link are very helpful and I had never used that feature before. I definitely plan on using those preferences now when I am googling.