But the recent episode is another example of just how pervasive the Google search engine has become for everyone else in everyday society.

There are "ego-Googles," when you Google yourself to see where you rank in the world. (You know you've done it, just admit it.)

There are "Google bombs," when you work the system to get a certain phrase to send people to a certain place ("evil empire" gets Microsoft, for example).

And then there is the standard Googling of someone you may not know well but want to know better. This is what happened in the case of Pettus-Brown, the basketball player-turned-developer accused of skipping Cincinnati with a couple hundred thousand dollars of the city's money.

Yet not many people understand how Google and other search engines work, or how to use them better.

"That has led to a major problem with Google controlling all these decisions from dating to purchases to anything else personal," said Sree Sreenivasan, a Columbia University journalism professor and an expert on the Web. "Someone might see something negative about someone on the first page, yet that reference might not even be to the right person."

Google ranks sites according to how many other sites are linked to it, not by total number of visits to a particular page, as previous search engines had done. It still amounts to a popularity contest, but a much different one than just ranking the most-visited sites.

It clearly is the most popular search engine on the Web, even making pioneer Yahoo scramble to update itself. Other sites have taken to using the Google engine themselves and rebranding themselves, while Google is gearing up for one of the largest Internet public stock offerings in history.

The Google site also has features such as language translators, a tool that highlights your search words on a particular Web page, and even a test site that allows you to telephone in your request and then hit "refresh" on the Google page to get your results.

It turns out the young woman who Googled Pettus-Brown got the right reference, and the FBI picked him up at an Applebee's on New York's Long Island. But a colleague of mine with a common name Googled himself and found, among other things, that others with his name include a ventriloquist, a Christian Scientist and a professor at the University of Michigan.

I "ego-Googled" myself and found a "David James Pilcher" on a sex offender list in Alaska.

So after talking to experts, including Craig Silverstein, the director of technology for Silicon Valley-based Google, here are some tips to better searching and for avoiding pitfalls such as wrongfully accusing your next date of being a child molester.

• Don't just use Google. Sure it's the best search engine, but it's kind of like seeing a doctor; it's always good to get a second opinion.

• Go deep. Don't stop after the first page or two. Several people have been publicly accused of doing things they didn't do because they shared the same name as someone who did.

• Don't believe everything you see. Some have figured out how to manipulate Google, although the site does not sell the first position to someone willing to shell out cash, which is the case on some other sites. Use common sense.

• Learn the "special operators." This term refers to different terms and techniques to refine your search. Using quote marks around a phrase, for example, makes sure Google searches for that exact phrase.

• Play Jeopardy! In other words, phrase your query like a Jeopardy answer, such as "the average rainfall in the Amazon basin is." Then use the "highlight" function on the Google toolbar to highlight that with the answer right next to it. Silverstein used this as an example, and the first entry supplied the answer: about 2,300 millimeters a year, or 2.3 meters.

If you want to learn more, Sreenivasan has a good list of surfing and Google tips at www.sreetips.com.

And once you get all the stuff you need, what do you do with it? If your bookmark or "My Favorites" file is becoming unwieldy or if you're tired of paying $40 for a new ink cartridge every few months, there is another new tool that acts like an online filing cabinet for articles and other clippings.

www.Furl.net is the invention of Mike Giles, who got the idea after remembering his grandfather pawing through a cabinet for old newspaper clippings. The service, which made its debut last month, is free for the time being, and after a week, I'm hooked. It saves copies of anything you want, so even a newspaper article that might go into a paid archive system can still be accessed, since a separate copy is saved on the Furl server.

It also has a Google-style toolbar to use with Microsoft Internet Explorer that saves the page in question in a customizable file system with one click. The process saves an infinite amount of time from having to find the article through a second search.

HDTV note: My last column on high-definition television might have given the impression that the only way to get an HDTV feed from local channels is on cable. Later in the column, I stated that you can also get the signal over the air with a traditional antenna, but I just wanted to reiterate that point. Thanks for all the e-mails.

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E-mail jpilcher@enquirer.com