New Tool in Google! The Explore Tool

By Kristie Hughes

Goodbye Research Tool, Hello Explore Tool!

You may have been familiar with the Research tool in Google, where you could search for an image or article, bring it over to your document, and the citation for the image or article would automatically plant itself at the bottom of your page.

Starting on October 13th you will notice that the Research tool is no longer available! It has been replaced with the Explore tool. The Explore tool works similarly to the research tool in that you can research on the web, but it does not add the citations at the bottom of the page.

When you go to the Tools menu in Docs, Slides, and Drawings,  click Explore... to make the tool appear on the side of your page.



You can also just click on the little explore button at the bottom of your Document, Slide, or Drawing.


**You can also use the Explore tool in Sheets, but it is designed to explore the data in your sheet.**

Once the Explore tool is opened you will notice three tabs: Web, Images, or Drive. This allows you to search These areas for your search word. Type in the key word in the box.

The example shown is searching  "water cycle".





Web:
If you are searching on the web for your key word, the Explore tool will pull up various articles. You can do all your exploring and then if you want to link to the article in your document, drawing, or slide, you can just drag over the article title in the explore tool, and it will automatically create a link for you to the article. (This is not the citation, rather just the link to the article.)



Image:
If you find an image that you like, bring it over to your document by holding down on it and dragging it over. At the bottom of your image is a short link, in which you can click on to get the whole link for the image. (This is not a citation in a certain format, this is just the image link.)



From Drive:
If you want to search your Drive for a topic, use this feature to search for your key word. When you click on your Drive file, it will open in a new tab; it does not insert itself into your current document.





In a future Tech Tuesday Tip we will look at replacements for the citation features that we used to enjoy in the Research Tool.