Recently I was recommended a YouTube video titled “How to Google like a senior software engineer”. It was showing some Google dorks to filter out results so you can find the exact solution that you’re looking to solve your problem.

While watching the video, I thought to myself, aren’t we all professional Googlers? If we are better than someone else at doing something, whether it’s coding, or any knowledge that we acquire just because we are better at Googling than someone else?

How many times do you Google in a day? If you are coding something and came across a problem, or want a solution to an annoying bug, don’t you Google to see whether someone else has come across the same problem as you? And don’t you try to implement it to your solution?

So what makes your solution better than someone else is the fact that your Google query was better than someone else? And out of the results Google show you, your solution is better than someone else because you know what result you should use for your solution. For example using a StackOverflow answer from 2015 with a lengthy javascript vs an answer from 2020 which uses an ES6 solution which solves the same problem but easier?

Then this brings another question, are we good as the Google queries that we make, and the Google results which Google wishes to show us, and how good the Google algorithm is?

We take Google or any other search engine that’s available out there for granted. Just imagine trying to find a solution on the internet without knowing where to look? Aren’t we still be searching though our friend’s blog, Facebook or Twitter trying to find a solution.

I know Google isn’t perfect, Google has made some bad changes along the way. For example, I remember there was a time where we can omit certain websites from ever appearing on Google results. But this has been removed for a while, and I come across websites over and over again which just cloned a StackOverflow answer which I already skipped few minutes ago, because it was not good enough.

In a way we are all professional Googlers, and we become what the algorithm wants us to be.