Transcript Google Tips and Tricks
Tips and tricks for using Google
How does Google search?
Google’s Aim “The perfect search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give you back exactly what you want.”
Larry Page, Co-founder & CEO
How does Google search?
How does Google search?
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Results
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Phrasing your search queries
Tips for phrasing 1. Start simply
William Shakespeare
Tips for phrasing 2. Add relevant words
William Shakespeare Life
Tips for phrasing 3. Think within the field
The Bard of Avon
Tips for phrasing 4. Only use important words* Not ideal: When will the sun come up in London tomorrow? Ideal: sunrise London
Tips for phrasing * Common words are ignored:
The for and to a that some it’s all in
Tips for phrasing …most of the time the who
Google is intelligent
Don’t worry about
1. Spelling
– autocorrects
2. Punctuation
– ignores @#%^*()=[]\
3. Capitalisation
– the new internationalist = The New Internationalist
When you search Google… • • • • • suggests spelling corrections and alternative spellings personalizes your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before includes synonyms of your search terms to find related results find results that match similar terms to those in your query searches for words with the same stem, like "running" when you search for [ run ]
Verbatim Search
Using special characters
Quotation Marks Search for an exact phrase in an exact order.
e.g. “to be or not to be” Warning: you may exclude relevant results.
e.g. a search for "Alexander Bell" will miss pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.
Minus Sign Excludes words from your search e.g.
The Great Gatsby -film
Tilde Searches for synonyms e.g.
~food facts includes results for “nutrition facts”
2 full stops Searches for a specific number range e.g.
prime ministers 1900 .. 2000 N.B. Make sure you put a space either side of the full stops.
Phrasing your search queries
Search within a site
site:
allows you to get your search from a specific site or type of site (.gov, .edu).
e.g. unemployment site:gov would only give you search results from .gov websites
Search related
related:
allows you to find pages that have similar content to a site e.g. related:www.bbc.co.uk
would give you other news and media agencies
Define
define:
gives you a definition of a word e.g. define: irony
Filetypes
filetype:
searches for specific filetypes e.g. the war of the roses filetype:ppt
Further information
Links Inside Search Help
http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py
?hl=en&safe=vss&answer=134479
All Tips and Tricks
http://www.google.com/insidesearch/tipstricks/all.ht
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