I rock!!There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed!!

The word “Google” has become so ubiquitous today that “Googling” has become synonymous with “searching”.

Wikipedia, quite rightly, refers to Google as a verb.

“The verb to google (also spelled to Google) refers to using the Google search engine to obtain information on the Web.”


I feel people are so addicted to the “Google syndrome” that they just survive on Google. In fact, many people would have lost jobs had it not been for the excellent & powerful search algorithm provided by “Google”.

For me, finding anything on the web was as easy as typing in the keyword, pressing enter and letting Google do the rest for me. My only task would be to select the most relevant search among zillions of results and skip to another search result if the first page does not give the information that I was looking for. This was good for occasional searches but when I started surviving on Google, I soon realized that it was turning out to be too much of a hassle not to mention the time that was being wasted on getting the desired result.

This forced me to find a better way to answer my queries. I found that there were lots of websites that provided tips and tricks on how to use Google. My initial thought was it would be a sheer waste of time to go through such sites just to learn how to “Google” but later realized that they had lots of useful hints which if used properly can lead to a pleasant search experience.

Next task was to identify the website that I can bookmark and use as a reference for my googling needs. I scanned through quite a number of websites and an equal number of blogs to get the right one or should I say the perfect one for me.

My search for the ideal “google help” concluded with the discovery of this excellent website “http://www.googleguide.com” by Nancy Blachman. Nancy has provided good interactive google tutorials and guides on GoogleGuide.
Though the website is quite old, it has lots of excellent references. The USP of GoogleGuide is it caters to a wide range of users. It has separate sections for novice and expert users. GoogleGuide also has a section exclusively for teens ;-).

The tutorial starts with Nancy helping the user enter a basic google query. Nancy takes a user along through the journey of understanding the results of the queries, importance of keywords ,use of operators, various search tools and services provided by google upto developing a personal website.

GoogleGuide gives a detailed explanation on how Google works with a description of tools like Googlebot, Google indexer and Google processor. It also provides information on the commonly used terms and phrases in the cyber world. To make life easier, GoogleGuide has cheat sheets for quick and easy reference.

In addition to all the interesting guides and lessons, GoogleGuide also tells why Google is the most popular search engine and shares Google’s Mission and philosophy.

A testimonial in the website sums it up, “GoogleGuide … is the most comprehensive, well-organized, and useful search tutorial I’ve been able to find”

Happy Googling!!

Tags: blog, blogs, bookmark, developer, discovery, google, googleguide, googling, jobs, nancy blachman, queries, relevant search, search algorithm, search engine, search experience, tips and tricks, wikipedia