November 2009

Like having only one knife in the kitchen, many people turn to one tool when they are looking for information – Google.

There is nothing wrong with relying on only one search tool, if the information you are looking for is:

Out in public
What kind of information is out in public? Certainly not all information produced or held by Governments, corporations, media organisations or individuals.

People and organisations still hold back an enormous amount of information from being placed on the free and visible internet due to confidentiality, privacy, copyright, sensitivity, access restrictions or modesty!

Access all areas
A vast, huge, enormous amount of information is on the internet, but will not be picked up in a Google, or any other search engine, as it is, hopefully, hidden behind a secure wall accessible only by those with permission.

This encompasses vast quantities of private information, such as banking details, email accounts, private twitter feeds or airline frequent flyer details for individuals. It also includes information when can only be accessed if you are granted the right of entry through being a valid subscriber, member, or registered user.

Despite the great changes to the amount of news freely available on the internet, access to deep archives still remains off limits for many newspapers via a google search as it is available to paying subscribers only.

Broad brush
A google search is great if the information you are looking for is likely to be found on the first broad brush search, such as show times for your local cinema for this weekend. Finessing, and refining search results isn’t Google’s strong point.

Google is great, but all good cooks know, you need a lot of good tools in the kitchen to improve your results.