chapter 2

Google
Web Search
This chapter presents an overview of the basic Google Web Search,
focusing on the major features to show how you can use them in your daily
reference work.
Google’s central purpose is to search the whole web—as much as it can
possibly index, anyway. There are also ways to search subsections of the web
or certain types of material. For each of these services, we do not cover all
the available features here. In some cases, we cover topics in later chapters. In
other cases, because some features may not be as useful at the reference desk,
we focus on only the most useful features of these services.

Basic Search

Nearly every Internet user today is familiar with the Google home page. But,
just as a reminder, here it is again in figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1 The Google home page 15