When people stumble on this blog after typing a query in Google, I can read that query on the blog's statistics page, and I have to say some amaze me to no end. Like this one, this afternoon, from Canada: Analyze the basis that might have led Michael Porter to make the comments noted above. Discuss the validity of the points that he is making. Comment on the application of this statement to an industry.
That type of query amazes me for two (related) reasons. The first one is, of course, that students would hope a worthy term paper would be available for free on the Internet, and their teacher wouldn't find out. Don't the kids realize teachers know about the Internet too? Tools to fight online plagiarism, like Turnitin, are now offered on Blackboard [online course portal where students can download assignments, lectures, etc posted by the instructor in all of their courses - this removes the need for professors to make their own course webpage and has a lot more capabilities, such as online grade management, wikis, group pages where all users can post documents]. While my courses don't easily lend themselves to essays, I have run students' papers by Turnitin when financial engineering grad students had to perform literature reviews, and have done so for answers to qualifier exam's questions. It is naive for students to expect they can find essay answers on the Internet. Besides, they might not be the only ones hoping for an easy way out of the assignment (I often see clusters of such queries on the blog's statistics page), and plagiarism is a recipe for trouble. This speaks volumes about students' opinion of their teachers' "technological literacy".
The second reason for my amazement at such queries is that people treat search engines as cultivated uncles who understand human language. This naivete about what the Google search engine can and cannot understand is reflected in another observation I have made: even if people don't enter whole sentences, they often type without quotes groups of words that they clearly want to find together. This is going to sound like a technical, obscure matter, but how can people master the capabilities of search engines and find the information they are looking for if they don't even know that, for Google or Yahoo or MSN to look for an expression as typed, one has to put the expression between quotation marks? Typing it without quotes tells Google to return only pages that have both words somewhere in the text, but not necessarily close from each other. People then end up with thousands more results, many of which are irrelevant to the original query. They will sift through the first few pages of links and, if they are looking for something off the beaten path, will give up on their search before reaching the link that would have truly answered their question, but is buried far down the list.
I don't even think in terms of sentences when I type queries such as +"auction-rate securities" +wsj In addition to the quotation marks, explained above, the + symbol tells Google I want both groups of words; if I had typed - in front of wsj [Wall Street Journal], that would have meant I didn't want any article that had wsj in it. I have become so used to that type of search I don't think twice about it - it's just a routine query. Then again, I am an engineer. Many people can handle typing quotes into a search box, but think about all those who take pride in not being good at math, faced with the prospect of having to write mathematical symbols to get the information they need - imagine the look of horror on their face. Some will undoubtedly prefer setting themselves up for failure rather than dealing with pluses and minuses.
Today the blog had its 20,000th view since I started writing a year and a half ago. It also has a 30-day average of 54 views a day. Thanks for reading, everyone!
Posted by: Aurelie | September 24, 2008 at 01:52 PM
One of my hobbies is to try to find a random collection of words that, when entered into Google, lead me to a specific blog. For instance, you may be happy to know that anyone interested in looking for a "cocktail party" for their "AP class" are likely to stumble on your website! This hobby is only fun, though, when you know the blogger occasionally refers to the blog statistics.
Posted by: Jim | September 25, 2008 at 09:59 AM
There is one query in the Typepad stats about "cocktail party" and "AP physics", leading to my post "Education in Pennsylvania". For some reason, I doubt it's skewing my 20,000 views (20,058 now)...
But maybe the Typepad stats have a glitch and all my traffic is really only due to one very bored person, hitting "refresh" 50 times a day every day for a year and a half. Who would have thought! :)
Posted by: Aurelie | September 25, 2008 at 10:14 AM
I wasn't going to say it, but another hobby of mine was to mess up people's counters! :)
Actually, that energy would be better spent clicking on google ads for companies I dislike, so unless you start advertising, you shouldn't worry about me messing up you stats!
Posted by: Jim | September 25, 2008 at 10:43 AM
Jim!! And I thought I owed most of the traffic not coming from other sites to my former student Ilya. (Hi Ilya!)
Thankfully, today I'm getting traffic from globalhighered, so that definitely makes me feel better about your shenanigans. :) Perfect timing.
Posted by: Aurelie | September 25, 2008 at 02:32 PM
Hi ^_^. Yep, I check up whenever I can because who knows when something interesting might pop up!
Posted by: Ilya ^_^ | September 26, 2008 at 12:08 AM
Thanks again for the post above, and the comments on our entry [about KAUST at globalhighered.wordpress.com], Aurelie! I agree - it will be interesting to see how this unfolds...
Posted by: Kris | September 29, 2008 at 08:44 PM