Master Search with “A Google a Day”

Google continues the trend of providing helpful tools for its users with the recent launch of ‘A Google a Day’. The new program – a daily puzzle challenge - is designed to teach users how to use its search engine. Many may wonder why the world’s best search engine is coming with this program now, after being used by billions over its years of existence? That answer is simple, there are many young people across the world that have access to the Internet and need information but don’t know exactly how to search for it. According to A Google a Day designer Daniel Russell, “For the past several years I've been trying to put together some kind of game that would engage people in a playful way to learn how to search. After many trials, we FINALLY got one version of the Search Game out into the world! AGoogleADay.com is a simple game that poses a daily search puzzle for you to solve.” “The game started Monday, April 11, 2011, and will run for four weeks with each day's puzzle getting harder from Monday through Friday. The secret agenda here is to get people to play around with search and to learn all they can do. I've felt for a while like Goggle gives people intergalactic hyper drive star ship capabilities, but most people only explore the shallows by paddling around with their shuttlecraft." To make the game interesting, A Google a Day uses an index called Deja Google, which leaves out recent web pages. Daniel Russell had this to say about using Deja, "To keep the game interesting for everyone, we created Deja Google – a wormhole inspired time machine that searches the Internet as it existed before the game began. Because nobody wants someone's recent blog post about finding an answer spoiling their fun." If you are interested in playing this great learning game, which also teaches you about a wide variety of aspects of life, you can check it out at www.agoogleaday.com.