# How good a Googler are you? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [February 27, 2009, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619 "2009-02-27T05:48:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/1 "2009-02-27T05:48:51Z")
Think you got what it takes? Can you comfortably schmoogle with Google or are you the type-and-pray sort? [Prove it](http://gwigle.varten.net/). It’s 2009. If you can’t get past at least a few levels of this thing, your Internet license needs to be revoked 😛 (Disclaimer: I posted this a few years ago, but I wanted to see if things/times/people are different now.) ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/2 "2009-02-27T05:50:55Z")
Friends and family come to me to google things for them when can’t turn anything up. Even some pretty computer-savvy people. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/3 "2009-02-27T05:54:39Z")
Shitty. What’s Nano -??? No clue. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/4 "2009-02-27T05:57:29Z")
Ipod! I don’t even own one but I got it :D. This is fun. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/5 "2009-02-27T05:57:48Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > Shitty. What’s Nano -??? No clue. There’s a small, very popular fruity thing that goes by the name \_ \_ \_ \_ Nano. Several generations of 'em, in fact. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/6 "2009-02-27T05:59:10Z")
Had no idea what Google’s informal corporate motto is. Had to do an auxiliary search to get that. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/7 "2009-02-27T06:01:01Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > Ipod! I don’t even own one but I got it :D. This is fun. Hey! Which BBCode tag am I thinking of? [s???r]\_\_\_\_\_\_\_[/s???r] Tsk, tsk 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/8 "2009-02-27T06:03:41Z")
Ah, come on, it’s like the second question :p. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/9 "2009-02-27T06:24:49Z")
And here are the returned search clues for nano-ipod? > [@](#): > > National Nanotechnology Initiative > An investment programme for the basic molecular nanotechnological research, provided by the US administration’s federal funding. > [www.nano.gov/](http://www.nano.gov/) - 18k - Cached - Similar pages > > GNU nano > Clone of the Pico text editor with some enhancements. Available for Linux and DOS. > [www.nano-editor.org/](http://www.nano-editor.org/) - 5k - Cached - Similar pages > > American Chemical Society Publications: Nano Letters Home Page > Nano Letters is an American Chemical Society publication that rapidly communicates significant research results related to the theory and practice of … > [pubs.acs.org/journals/nalefd/](http://pubs.acs.org/journals/nalefd/) - Similar pages No wonder I failed. Or maybe I just don’t grasp the concept? ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Sensitive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/58956e/32.png) [@Darth\_Sensitive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Sensitive)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/10 "2009-02-27T06:35:46Z")
I gave up on the math one 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/11 "2009-02-27T06:54:31Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > And here are the returned search clues for nano-ipod? > > No wonder I failed. Or maybe I just don’t grasp the concept? Yeah. Nano[minus]ipod. If you don’t exclude the term ipod, I’m guessing it’d fill up the first page. ---
**Author:** ![wunderkammer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ed8c4c/32.png) [@wunderkammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wunderkammer)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/12 "2009-02-27T06:55:51Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > And here are the returned search clues for nano-ipod? > > No wonder I failed. Or maybe I just don’t grasp the concept? I do not think that piece of punctuation means what you think it means. ---
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/13 "2009-02-27T07:04:57Z")
> [@wunderkammer](#): > > I do not think that piece of punctuation means what you think it means. So, I get it now. And I’m still a shitty Googler. I had some idea that you could exclude terms but have never once used it myself. I might from now on though. Cheers. ---
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/14 "2009-02-27T07:20:19Z")
> [@Darth\_Sensitive](#): > > I gave up on the math one 😃 I didn’t, because I’m awesome and I totally solved it with my head. But my… um… friend, my friend… “Sr Seis” had no idea either. What a moron. Finally he, not me, he realized that there was only two question marks, wich means two one digit numbers. So I-- I mean, he, he just tried different combinations. ---
**Author:** ![grimpixie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@grimpixie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grimpixie)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/15 "2009-02-27T07:29:05Z")
I’m stuck on the tax one with the PDF search term… ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 8:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/16 "2009-02-27T08:29:36Z")
I gave up after level 4, I think. ---
**Author:** ![atomicbadgerrace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@atomicbadgerrace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/atomicbadgerrace)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/17 "2009-02-27T08:50:35Z")
> [@grimpixie](#): > > I’m stuck on the tax one with the PDF search term… > > ☹ You see that all the results are PDFs, though. How do you tell Google that the only results you’d like are those that are PDFs? I gave up on the image search one. Really, I have no idea what could fit in those blanks. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/18 "2009-02-27T08:58:18Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > It’s 2009. If you can’t get past at least a few levels of this thing, your Internet license needs to be revoked 😛 Thing is, though, that test is really pretty useless as a measure of one’s ability to use Google. Even if you know all of the search strategies it shows in the test questions, it still doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get the answer. In many ways, it’s more a test of internet trivia than anything else. You could sit my mother down for a year and teach her every single Google trick in the book, so that she turned into the doyen of all Google searchers, but i’ll bet she still wouldn’t know to associate the word “nano” with “iPod.” ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/19 "2009-02-27T09:18:12Z")
Right, but if she did a Google search for ‘nano’, she’d see that the first few hits are about the ipod nano. So by eliminating that one, she’d get the answer. That’s how I did it, anyway. Often, intentionally doing a ‘wrong’ search gives you a better idea of what the right search is. I often have to wave off my boss when he gives an impossibly vague or imprecise search demand and then says “that’s not what I want!” when I aim off-target in order to narrow the criteria down. ---
**Author:** ![tirial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ac91a4/32.png) [@tirial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tirial)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2009, 10:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619/20 "2009-02-27T10:05:33Z")
It crashed out on 1.7 (“Can’t find server”). How many people have you got playing this!? Nothing too hard up to there. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-a-googler-are-you/487619.md?page=2)