Better Than Google

Let's make sure you take full advantage of Google when doing information research.  By doing so, you learn some information literacy tricks too!

 

ADVANCE GOOGLE SEARCH TIPS

What are the essentials in searching?

• After your search results come up, look at the top and Use the TABS ALL / IMAGES / NEWS / BOOKS ............

• Search simple: Pizza places nearby

• Or Search complex: job interview questions techniques “public relations” PR positions

• Use words that would appear in the site, not words in form of a question: Your question: How many poor people are black or Hispanic? Your search phrase: poverty rates minority black hispanic non-white

• Get all Google doodles (animated cartoon) by hitting I’m feeling Lucky

• Search news archives as old as mid-1880s

• Select Google News (upper right boxes)- Search Tools – Recent - Archives

Search phrases with unknown words

Use * (asterisk) and “” (quotes) to find the unknown Ex: “* is bigger than Earth”. Answer: sun

Search definitions and spellings

Ex: define:byte. Answer: basic unit of measure in computer storage

Search for a particular meaning of a word

Use hyphen to avoid a particular search term (because of several meanings) Ex. “rat fink” -rodent. Answer:slang for detestable person

Search within just the title

searches for the word ONLY in the Title field of the website. Ex. Intitle:sasquatch. Answer:big foot info

Social tag search Add symbol “@” before the search term.
Ex: @sternshow. Answer: finds Howard Stern Twitter account etc.

How do I search for specific words, phrases, and titles?

Search exact phrases Use quotes to search an exact phrase.

Ex: “boston commons”. To find the central park in downtown Boston, MA.

Searching trending topics

Add a hashtag before the search term to get the results with trending topics. Ex. #trumpwasright. Finds very current postings of same.