I created a cheat sheet on tips on how to use google effectively.  Please provide feedback on this cheat sheet.. I’m planning to extend the cheat sheet concept  for IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture,  Technical interview questions for IT managers, open source, social networking eco systems and etc.

Why do we need a cheat sheet to use google effectively?

There are quite a few documents available in the google help on various operators. Some of the operators like links are not widely used and to avoid the overwhelming information for the users , I created this cheat sheet with frequently used operators.

Google is an effective search engine today and Bing from Microsoft has recently been launched and before Bing’s launch, I had been waiting to study Bing search performance.  On the day it was launched, I was playing around with Bing and searching for the key words like  “Air France”. During the Bing launch week, there was an air tragic when Air France flight from Brazil was missing in the Atlantic. I was searching for “Air France” in the Bing and Google at the same time and you can see the bing search result and google search result.  Even though both the search engine results were trying to sell Air France tickets, Google suggested if I’m looking for Air France Crash.  Contextual search in Google is very powerful and at the same time it provides numerous results back for any popular key words. There are lots of room for improvement to narrow down the results to the users specific query.

To over come it, there is an advanced search option in the google search engine which requires additional input from the users to narrow down the user specific search.  Advanced search option basically translates into what was mentioned in the cheat sheet. The usage of advanced search option may become challenging when you are using it from handheld like blackberry.

The problem we all face today is, google provides too much of information. I call it information over load and it limits the user ability to narrow down the key information the user is seeking for. 

Next generation search engine..

To over come the information over load, WolframAlpha is emerging.  Stephen Wolfram, the CEO & Founder of Wolfram Research is the founder of WolframAlpha.  Any science graduate must have heard the mathematical software Mathematica and Mathematica is from Wolfram Research.  (It is the first mathematical software I know, which solves the problem algebraically. Where as software product like Matlab, Maple, Octave, etc solves the math problem numerically). It is trying to over come the information over load problem when we all users are facing today with google search engine.

WolframAlpha is emerging search engine tries to narrow down to specific search results. Most of the time, it tries to come up with  an exact answer for the search query..

Will it take over Google or will it become a gaint calculator.. Time only can answer this question.. Let us be vigilant,wait and watch it..