Google Scholar analyzes a smaller subset of the material covered by the basic Google search engine. Those sources include many of the same scholarly journal articles covered in the “academic” databases, plus conference papers, society publications, documents produced by bodies such as government departments, the United Nations, the World Bank, and also PDF files and other similar documents on the .ac and .edu websites of academic institutions. Equally significant, Scholar is able to search across all subjects, and doesn’t require switching from one database to another to cover different aspects of a topic. Because of the types of material Scholar examines, much of the unreliable garbage included in results from a basic Google search is eliminated.
