PowerSearchingWithGoogle.com

Lesson 2.3: Images & Videos

Access Lesson 2.3 slides here

Contents:

This is lesson 2.3 and this is all about understanding different options that you have when you're doing searches, different options you have for media. It's an important skill to realize that when you search, sometimes the best way to search for something is to search around in different sections of the library if you will; there are books, there are magazines, but in Google we have web results, we have images, we have videos, we've got all kinds of stuff and I'll show you how to search in those different areas as well. So here for example, I've got a search for resume and this is just your regular Google search and you can see though that there are web results on the left hand side and on the right hand side we have a knowledge panel, and in this case the knowledge panel is special.

It's trying to tell you something a little bit out of the ordinary, so notice up here on the top of the knowledge panel we have these images and basically what Google is telling you with that little grey thing that says more images right here, it's telling you that there are lots of images that correspond to resume, maybe you want to check that out. In the middle of the knowledge panel we see the regular definition of resume and at the bottom of that we see resume books, so what this is, is Google telling you, look if your search is resume, there are lots and lots of books about resumes. It's important, this is not an ad, it's just telling you that there is a collection of books, different media kind on this topic, and as you scroll down the page you'll see there are people also asked kind of results and at the very bottom, related searches.

So remember when you're doing this kind of expansive search on this topic, resumes, there are other ways to frame the question, here are some. So checking another media type like say images turns out to be incredibly handy for resumes because you can read about resumes, but often looking at an example of a real resume is the best way to go. Here in Google images, as you can see we have a bunch of images and a row of tabs across the top.

Let me show you live. So I'm going to do my search for resume like that and remember this is just a regular web search and so you get the results and the knowledge panel on the right hand side. Now I'm going to click on the Images tab right there and switch my search from web results to image search resume and I get a lot of interesting results here you can see tons and tons of examples. Fantastic, but suppose I'm actually a youngster looking for a first job and I'd like to see resumes for a first job.

Across the top are those suggestion chips, so I'm gonna click on first one for first job. Click on that and now we're doing an image search about sample resumes for a first job. This might be exactly what you want so pay attention to the chips across the top because they're often forms of the query that you're doing that capture exactly the nuance that you're looking for. Now it's important to remember I just showed you images but there are lots and lots of different kinds of results of the web, different media kinds. We just showed you web, we just showed you images, but remember there's also videos and there are shopping results, there's books, that's what the tab across the top is trying to tell you, there are other media kinds; consider looking there as well.

Let's go back to our friend Sagittaria. Here I've done the search just in regular web results, so Sagittaria not a surprise, we've seen this before, but remember it's got a little collection of videos here in the bottom, you see that down here. When you see that, it is again trying to tell you we know there's a lot of results about videos here, so let's keep looking in different types. I clicked on the videos tab up here in the row of tab different modes, different kinds of media, and we see there's a lot of videos about Sagittaria.

Click on News and much to my surprise, turns out to be a lot of news articles about Sagittaria, who knew? If you keep going there's a bunch of results on shopping, etc., etc. so keep in mind as you do these kinds of searches that sometimes the best search is in a mode or media kind that you might not have thought about.

For example, I lost the chain off my bike today and I need to figure out how do I replace the chain on my bicycle. We could go to Google and just ask and find out. So here I am in Google, I can say how do I replace my bike chain.

And voila we have a big beautiful video right here at the very top, but notice I'm in regular Google search All, so Google by giving me a video at the very first result very large like this is saying look there are probably a lot of videos on this.

It might be that this video is the perfect one for me, but I'm going to be a little bit more general and click on the videos tab right there and see all the videos. Now one of the nice things about searching the videos with Google is that you search not just YouTube but all the other video resources on the web. So in this case there are 178,000 roughly videos on how to replace your bicycle chain, so this is a neat result because it shows you that often videos are really great for showing you how to do something.

Trying to figure out what all those parts are, the bike chain and the bike tool are called is challenging, but if I see it I know exactly how to do it. Let's do another query though, an activity that you might want to do, so for example how to make a pizza.

And voila, we get a bunch of little videos showing me how to make these pizzas. I can do it at home. I can make the pizza dough, I can cook it and do the whole bit. Again, all of these videos are exactly the kind of thing for doing this kind of task, so go ahead now that you know that all the different media types exist and you know how to switch, go ahead and do the next activity and explore your own media spaces. It'll help you out.  

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(Updated 3/20/19 A. Awakuni Fernald)