Is Google taking over the world? I can’t confirm this, but it is without a doubt the predominating force on the internet. Its ads are everywhere and everybody wants to earn money with “Google AdSense”.The company founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brim, has become a major player in the online search market in the few years that it has been in existence. The brand name has become so famous that it has become a verb; the term has been included in the Oxford English dictionary, one of the major references for the English language. Take a look at this:

Mary Googled for Wikipedia references.
Mary procurou no Google por referências da Wikipedia.

It’s important to remember that the verb has to be capitalized. Now we will move on to the subject matter of how to learn English using Google search as a tool.

Tip 1 – If you are in doubt regarding the correct usage of a particular expression, all you have to do is test the two possibilities in Google, always putting the expression in “quotation” marks. Example:

“The Brazil is a big country” – (1 occurrences)
“Brazil is a big country” – (336 occurrences)

The second search string has a great deal more chances of being correct, therefore, use it. In the worst case scenario, you will be committing the same error as the more than 336 sites on the internet. If your search comes up empty, you can be sure that you have made a mistake.

Tip 2 – If you are in doubt about the about how a particular word should be used in a sentence, you can use the wildcard character “*” placed between quotation marks. See:

“He * there for seven years”

Applying the results, I found out that some words can be used in the sentence, they are: stayed, lived, worked e remained. Therefore, choose the one that makes sense to you.

Tip 3 – We saved the best for last. Googlefight is a web site that compares two expressions and informs us which of them is more often cited on the web. The link is: http://www.googlefight.com.

Did you enjoy these tips? Tell me in the comments how it helped you.

I hope that helps.

See ya!

Collaborator: Mary Ziller