I recently took a class in strategic foresight. We looked up major trends happening in an industry of our choice. Mine was management consulting. What I found was that old information was popping up. By old, I mean information from the beginning of the year. The beginning of 2020. Oh, did I mention that this class started in May of 2020. So, a lot of the pre-COVID trends had to be reexamined.
My Strategic Foresight professor showed me a little trick to use with Google. One that is easy to overlook. Especially if you’re just going to Google, typing in your search term, and trusting that the information that comes back to you is the best or the latest information.
Google is a database at its most basic form. And it’s one of the biggest “Big Data” databases out there. Not many people treat it as such.
Think about it. We think of information we want to know. We go to Google (or another search engine) and we type in what we’re thinking – our search term. Google pulls up articles that met its algorithm and its criteria.
Here’s the million-dollar question: Did Google’s search results meet YOUR criteria?
Let’s stick with the foresight example. So, I was looking for trends in a particular industry. The catch was that none of my sources could be more than 90 days old. At this particular time, this was critical. Information greater than 90 days old would have put me in pre-COVID trend territory – which would have skewed my data. To properly scan what’s coming up on the horizon, I needed fresh information about trends.
Google’s algorithms control the information that pops up on the first page. And who has times to scroll through thousands of pages of results. Not me. And I’m guessing that you don’t either. The good news is you have control over the information you search for. I use Google, but I’m sure other search engines offer the same filters. google has certain criteria of which articles pop up first – not always the most relevant or the latest information – or from the culture you’re looking for.
With any data collection method – you can filter your information. You can treat a search opportunity as research.
If I were to boil this down to a slogan, it would be this (and no…I do not receive any payola for writing this) …
Google filters: Control the search for yourself.
You can view this one-minute video for more information.