How good Google searchers get to be that way
Dan Russell , Google
drussell
google.com
Seminar on People, Computers,
and Design
Stanford University January 18, 2008
Some searchers are very effective at finding stuff with search engines, others seem to have trouble getting their questions answered. Why are some searchers so good, and what do they do differently than others? I'll talk about some of the differences between searchers at different proficiency levels and what it means to learn how to search and research… and what the difference is. It's not the same as what you might have learned in a library skills class 20 years ago.
Daniel M Russell is a research scientist at Google where he works in the area of search quality, with a focus on understanding what makes Google users happy in their use of web search. He studies how people do their searches, trying to understand the most common traps and pathways to successful Google use. Dan has been a researcher at IBM's Almaden Research Center, Apple's Advanced Technology Group and Xerox PARC. He received his PhD from the University of Rochester before there was a world-wide web, and remembers a time when email addresses didn't end in .com or .edu. He enjoys long distance running, making music and word play, becoming disgruntled when he can't do all three in one day.
View this talk on line at CS547 on Stanford OnLine or using this video link.
Titles and abstracts for previous years are available by year and by speaker.