Library Research Skills: Google Searching: Search Tips

Use as few words as possible to begin your search 
Google recommends that you use only keywords in your search.  Take the concept you are searching and boil it down to the key concepts.  For example, if you are researching the question, should prayer be allowed in public schools? you could simply enter the words prayer public schools.  Occasionally, only a full question or statement returns the results you need, so if you want to add to your key concepts, do it.  But as a general rule, include only key concepts in your search.  The reason Google gives this direction is: 

More words in the search box = fewer results
Contrary to what you may think, the more words you enter in the search box, the fewer results you will retrieve.  That’s because Google assumes an “and” between every word you enter.  Consequently, EVERY word you enter in the search box must appear in the retrieved websites.  For example, a search on the word jazz will retrieve millions of results because millions of websites contain that word.  If, however, you add the word basketball to your search, only websites that have BOTH words will be returned.  If you then add the name Malone the results will decrease once more, as only the websites with all three words will be retrieved.  Each word added makes your search more specific and your results smaller.  

Minus sign
You can subtract a particular word from your search results by preceding a word with a minus sign.  Example: you want to find websites that discuss fracking in California.  You enter the words fracking California but notice that you keep getting results that also mention Texas.  To exclude all websites that mention Texas, enter fracking California  –Texas.  This will remove from your results any website that includes the word Texas.  You can put a minus sign in front of as many words as you need to.  Note that the minus sign is attached directly to the word Texas, with no space between.  However, there is a space between the minus sign and the preceding word. 

Filetype
Much of the academic information on the Internet can be found in spreadsheets or in other types of reports in MS Word format or PDF format.  You can limit your search to a particular type of document by including in the Google search box the word filetype, followed by a colon, and the file extension type you’d like to limit to.  For example, fracking California filetype:pdf will limit your results only to PDF documents. You can limit to PDFs and most Microsoft and Google documents (doc, docx, xlsx, pdf…). 

Once you have a search result, you can limit your results in other ways too by using the “Tools” link right under the search box. Once you click on “Tools” you’ll be presented with some additional limiting options, such as Anytime. Click Anytime to limit your results to websites updated within a particular time frame. You can even customize the time frame to dates you specify.  

Quotes
Google defaults to searching each word you enter individually.  You can force Google to search words as a phrase, rather than as individual words, by using quotes.  In the example of prayer public schools Google is looking for any website that contains the individual words prayer and public and schools.  It may be more effective to look for the word prayer and the phrase public schools. To accomplish this, search:

This forces Google to looks for the words in quotes together and in the order you specify.  This is an effective tool to use whenever you want to search a string of words in a specific order, such as the title of a book, song, or movie, or someone’s name.  Additionally, if Google is omitting a particular word from a search result, and you want that word included, put quotes around that word to force Google to search for it.

Site or Domain   
Most web addresses end with a three letter code, such as .com, .gov, .edu, .org, which represent a web domain. It’s important to be aware of these domains as they help you to know what type of entity sponsors the website.

.com is for commercial or business entities
.gov is for state and federal government websites
.edu is for websites of community college, colleges, and universities
.org was originally intended only for non-profit organizations, but lately has become a general type of domain that nearly any organization, non-profit or otherwise, can apply to use. 

Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) websites tend to be more reliable and you therefore may want to limit your results to those domains. You can do so in the search box by using the site: limiter.  Enter the word site, followed by a colon and then the domain or website you would like to limit to.  If you want to limit your fracking search to only government websites, you would enter the following in the search box: fracking California site:gov.  You can even limit to an entire website like this: fracking California site:epa.gov.  This would limit your results to just the Environmental Protection Agency website (epa.gov).

The following chart created by B Ireland-Symonds describes some of these Google search tips.