I'm partial to the former method for speed, but you almost always need to dive into the source to understand the "answer" provided. A somewhat relevant example

I'm partial to the former method for speed, but you almost always need to dive into the source to understand the "answer" provided. A somewhat relevant example is typing in a certain spelling of something to check correctness, and the first results are confirming your spelling, right or wrong. You click into the results, and you get "x, a common mispelling for y". Moral of the story, Google is great for finding things fast, but make sure you validate your results against multiple sources.