Power Searching With Google

I just finished my "Mid-class assessment" for the Power Searching with Google free online course being offered this month, and thought I'd do my own assessment of the course itself. You know, because I can't be the only one getting assessed.

At this point in the class, I feel that it is definitely worth the $0 I paid for it. Don't get me wrong, I've learned a couple tricks, and the course is very well organized, and the instruction is clear and concise (plus Daniel Russell is just adorable), but I certainly wouldn't pay for it.

On Twitter, I compared it to taking a grammar class--I inherently know all this stuff already, but it's nice to actually see the rules and the why and the how (and Lord knows some people really do need this).

Things I've learned:

• Word order matters. I'm kind of ashamed to admit I didn't know this.
• They use an acronym for the results page (SERP--search engine results page). Not sure why that's necessary.
• You can use the "filetype:" operator to filter results to find PDFs or DOCs or what have you.
• You can use a hyphen to "subtract" search results. All this time I've been using Boolean NOT, which apparently does NOT work.

Generally, it's been a positive experience so far. Even if they included an entire lesson on using Ctrl+F. I mean really.

If you want to take the class, you can still sign up through today.