I’m an unabashed Google user.  I think Google has long provided the best search results on the Web and I don’t see any sign that’s going to change any time soon.  The reason I think Google has so totally eclipsed its competitors like Yahoo!, Ask and Excite (remember them?) is that Google is the search engine that follows what I like to call the “smart firehose” principle.

Google spends millions and millions of dollars every year on tweaking their search results to make them better.  Engineers at Google constantly ask themselves:  How can we give people the information they want in as few clicks as possible?  Can we add context-relevant information such as a map, movie showtimes or images in order to make the search results more useful? In other words, Google would rather just give you the information you need if it possibly can, instead of sending you somewhere else.

When you search for something using a standard Google search (that is, at Google.com or through your browser’s search box), the search engine doesn’t separate relevant results, forcing you to click various sections of results. Instead, Google just gives you a list of the best results, depending on what you’re searching for and regardless of what type of result it is; consequently, a Google search results list will include links to web pages, maps, images, videos and more, all in one list. This “smart firehose” model works well for Google because it gives good results and then trusts people to make the right choice.

Libraries, in comparison, are woefully behind in search. Catalog searches are almost always totally separate from research information, so in order to find good information about, say, diabetes, a user will need to do multiple searches; one for the library’s catalog and at least one for the research databases. Often, users will need to go into several different research databases and perform individual searches.

Library users need a smart firehose.

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