According to the statistics site Worldometers, nearly 2 billion Google searches are made each day. That’s about the same amount that there are internet users in the world.

Google has exclusively claimed the meaning of the phrase “to search on the internet”. Who needs to be good at searching for information anymore when you can simply “google it”?

We put this question to Helen Blanchett – a trainer in web skills specialising in how to effectively find and evaluate information on the web. She has worked closely with search engines since the early days – long before Google existed.

“I can’t really criticise Google”, Helen said. “I do like it. Especially its simple interface and the fact that it does deliver results.

“But there is a danger that because it’s so popular it will eventually erode people’s ability to search information effectively.”

But there’s no need to be good at searching – Google does it for you. Right?

“There has definitely been a shift in what skills are essential. It’s not so much about being a skilled searcher anymore, what’s more important is the ability to critically evaluate information”, Helen said.

“Sometimes people even mistake Google for a source itself. As an answer to the question ‘where did you find this information’, you might get ’from Google’.”

“People also don’t miss what they don’t know. They get by not necessarily knowing that there might be better information out there”, Helen noted.

Feature article

Last Monday, Google celebrated its 12th birthday. We looked at what the internet was like before Larry and Sergey registered Google.com in 1997. Read more…

The internet before Google