google, useful as it may be, is simply a tool. and as a search tool, it's the most efficient i've seen. yahoo even acknowledges that (remember when yahoo used to partner with google in churning out their search results?).

but as a tool, how efficient the results google gives us would largely depend on how we use it. in shackman's example, 'yamato', as obscure as it may seem, will have pages related to it in google results. but one-word searches like that would certainly yield most accessed pages as google sees that as the relevant results.

adding some more keywords would narrow down the search. and the more keywords there are to a specific topic search you want to investigate, the narrower the search would go, and you would get the most relevant results. i usually do my searches in google with their advanced search features (using refinement techniques). here's a link for some tips: http://www.google.com.ph/help/refinesearch.html

 

 

 

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