"In the debut issue of the Google Librarian newsletter, we published an article by quality engineer Matt Cutts explaining how Google collects and ranks search results. The most common question we heard in response was 'How does Google determine which web sites are the most 'trusted'?' Here, his reply:"

It is a nice little article but it doesn't reveal anything earth shattering, Google's "secret sauce" is still a secret. Frankly for medical librarians who are always looking for good medical sites it is kind of disappointing. Yes, the big government and medical organizational sites are going to be trusted, and work well with Cutts linking explanation. But what about those smaller sites for lesser known diseases, procedures, and drugs?

What about Google Scholar? We would love to know what is in Google Scholar and what they consider "scholarly." I realize Google is behind PubMed in indexing the medical literature, but I would love to know just what journals, literature, conference proceedings, etc. that Scholar does cover. I certainly wouldn't look for an article in the Journal of Hospital Librarianship in PubMed, because it isn't indexed in MEDLINE. So what is the point of looking for an obscure reference from a journal in Scholar if Scholar doesn't cover it? There isn't. But because I don't know what is in Scholar I don't know whether the bit of information I am searching for is wrong or nonexistant, or whether Scholar failed to pick up that reference.

Do I expect Google to give up the recipe to their "secret sauce?" Nope, but I would like to know a few more ingredients and what kind of meat is called for in the recipe.