Research

Research and search engines

By Meg ⋅ February 11, 2007 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

by Megan Green

When you hear the word research most people immediately flash back to high school or college days. Writing papers was the only time we really think about researching anything. Yet as adults, we find ourselves researching everything from the best car to buy to salary bases for the job we are debating about accepting. We research insurance, housing markets, and the best piano teacher in the area. We are researching things everyday and not even conscience of the process. When we stop and evaluate the number of things we research, the number of things we don’t research and the number of things we-don’t-research-but-wish-we-could-research; it is an astounding figure.

Most of us never liked the process of searching while we were in school, as a matter of fact, I would venture a guess that most of us hated the process and spent time dreaming about hiring someone to do the work for us. (Notice I am offering you the benefit of the doubt here.) Interesting how few people consider this option as adults. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a personal assistant for all our personal business? Yes, there are private investigators to do sneaky work and background checkers to be sure that babysitter is on the up and up, but who do you call to find the best dog trainer in town? Who has time to plow through hundreds of pages of Consumer Reports before you make that new vacuum cleaner purchase?

Enter the internet factor. Research has taken on a whole new meaning since the birth of the internet. Now we have Google. Great!! Information at my fingertips, whenever I need it. My kids can prepare their papers without ever setting foot in a library. But then, just as suddenly as the websites became available, the number of website on any given subject grew to beyond any one humans’ lifetime. Who has time to review and evaluate 158,2549,2548,236,542 sites on gravity before Friday? How do you figure out which sites contain facts we need and which sites discuss the relationship between gravity and our once-higher-than-they-currently-are body parts? The need for quality information is growing, but how do we wade through it?

Say hello to Google!! I have a love/hate relationship with Google. I am glad they are there, they are one of my favorite search engines. Small guy success story, taking control of the internet, But can I trust their content? Are they accurate? What about all this paid advertising and PPC stuff? Are the first 20 sites they list really the best or just the most popular? Is popular good or is it like high school? Someone help me!!! I hear great things about MSN, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Looksmart, Dogpile, Lycos, Gigablast, HotBot, Teoma, AOL, Netscapes..….

I thought that after I graduated I could be done with all this research, but now I have to find a good plumber, mechanic, cell phone plan, school, car, treadmill, computer,…………….and apparently search engine!!! Where do I start researching that……