Not just Google

A twinge of guilt hit me after the blog post from yesterday about search, advertising, and online literacy. I was inspired by the original report that talked about students being confused by search links and advertising when doing Google searches.

As we all know, Google isn’t the only search engine on the web.

How do the others handle the same search? Is it clear what’s advertising and what’s an actual search result?

Bing

Yahoo!

Dogpile

DuckDuckGo

It’s interesting to see the results and note that not all search engines mark and/or display the advertising results in a similar fashion.

If this isn’t a call for a renewed emphasis of digital literacy and understanding search results, I’m not sure what would be. Are you sure that your “digital natives” really understand the difference?

And, of course, this is just a select few search engines that I use. (DuckDuckGo is my default) Check out the complete list of the “Top 15 Most Popular Search Engines | November 2015“. There’s more to a searching life than just the default that comes with your browser.

I do repeat the message from yesterday – Education always wins.

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Posted

2015-11-25

Computers, Education, learning, Read/Write Web, search, Teaching

dougpete

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3 responses to “Not just Google”

adunsiger

2015-11-25

Doug, it’s also interesting to note that not all results are the same. Why is that? Would the same be true for other search topics? I wonder if students could get into some critical literacy as they analyze the results, and even look at what does it take to make it to the “top results.” I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they would be interesting to dig into more. I also wonder what questions students may have about these results. Developing questioning skills is so important for students. Why not link this and media literacy?!

Aviva

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dougpete

2015-11-25

You’ve nailed the concept of digital and critical literacy perfectly, Aviva. My search was strategic in that it was very non-specific and I knew that there would be advertising results for the topic. I use much better search strategies if I’m doing it for myself and will use a couple of different search engines to make sure that I get the best results. I also, as I’ve noted in this blog before, will use the advanced search features of a search engine almost exclusively if I’m looking for something in particular.

The search example was very poorly done so that I could get the results that I wanted for the point of the post. Hopefully, our students would frame their search in a better way. If not, then they should start.

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OTR Links 11/26/2015 | doug — off the record

2015-11-26

[…] Not just Google | doug — off the record […]

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