What is Google?

When talking about research, many of my students say “I start with Google.” But I think many people don’t actually know what Google is because every semester I get students trying to cite Google on their reference page. Google is not a source of original (or even secondary, or even tertiary) information. Google is simply a search engine. Do you remember learning how to use a card catalog at a library when you were younger? (Yes, I’m dating myself now).  If you found books to use on a paper by using the card catalog, you wouldn’t cite the card catalog as a reference in the paper. The same can be said of Google.

Similarly, the card catalog didn’t differentiate between qualities of books. If you were looking for a book on George Washington, it would list books written by historians, fans, and enemies all in the same section because they were all about the same subject. It’s the same with Google. Just because Google lists 2,000,000 websites on George Washington, it doesn’t tell you which ones are credible to use.