Google Searching vs. Pubmed Searching

	Google	Google Scholar	Pubmed
What it Searches:	The World Wide Web	Many scholarly websites and publications found on the web.	The MEDLINE database of peer reviewed biomedical literature.
How it Searches:	Complicated algorithm combines "page rank" and text matching techniques.	Looks for text match. Attempts to weigh author, publication, and # of times a publication has been cited when returning results.	Looks for a match between your term and the fields (author, title, MeSH term) used to describe each article. Does not search the full text of the article.
Basic Search Techniques:	Keywords or phrases combined with quotation marks.	Keywords or phrases combined with quotation marks. Possible to restrict search by journal, author and date.	Keywords combined with AND, OR, & NOT, field searching, and MeSH (subject) searching. Quotes are not usually necessary.
Display of results:	It's NOT possible to change how results display.	Possible to sort results by most recent articles.	Possible to sort results by author, publication date, or journal.
Controlled By:	Google engineers control the search algorithm, but have no control over World Wide Web contents.	Content is selected by Google Scholar staff, who have been very secretive about the sources included. Some publishers refuse to let Google Scholar search their web content.	PubMed is controlled by human experts who systematically select data for inclusion in the database, and then describe and organize it.
Full Text Access?	No way to link directly to Library holdings from Google results.	You can link from Google Scholar results directly to the Library's full text.	You can link directly from PubMed to the Library's full text via the UW Article Online purple logo button.
Best Used For:	General web searching; finding recent medical news and announcements.	A quick, easy start on a search, especially in a multidiscplinary field. Can help identify some core papers in a field.	The most current and comprehensive source for searching the biomedical literature.

The chart adapted from the Levy Library, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, with their permission. November 2007