Google and you shall find

By Jennifer Edwards | Google, the king of all search engines, has just set up shop at McGill. Through an initiative of McGill's Web Service Group/ISR, now McGill.ca users will be able to harness the power of Google's mighty functionality when performing searches on the university's site.

Configured and implemented by WSG web system architect Stéphane Daury, the new McGill.ca search engine was launched on Friday, March 23. Although the search engine input box looks exactly the same, proof of something new is in the results.

"Users will notice tremendous speed and extreme relevance of results," Daury said.

They will also notice that the way the results are listed has a feel that is unmistakably Google.

"Not only has Google become the world's top-ranked search engine," said Karl Jarosiewicz, manager of WSG, "but it's become the way people expect search engines to work."

In terms of exploring the search engine's full functionality, Daury said this is only the beginning.

"We have content on campus that it just waiting to be discovered," he said. "It can finally be leveraged by being integrated in our search strategy."

With all this richness of results, Daury said, the McGill search engine should be a great way to while away a few hours. "You know when you have some time on a Saturday and you just plug in a few random words into a search engine to see what comes up? That's the kind of mentality that I want to bring to McGill's search engine. You can get the results you need, but have fun while doing it."