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Google Guide

The Internet is huge, and contains an ever growing amount of uncategorised, unedited and uncensored content. A search engine like Google can help you find relevant, good quality information.

Here are some tips to help you use Google properly. If you try them out for yourself, and start to use them in your own searches, you should find that the quality of your search results -and therefore your assignments- will improve.

1. Search Terms

The search terms you use, and the way you enter them, can make a difference.

It is always better to use more than one word, to try and eliminate irrelevant items.

Romans Britain typed straight into Google results in over 1.9 million hits.

"The romans in britain" (including the quotation marks) results in 44,000 hits, which is a big improvement as it gets rid of a large amount of the useless items.

Some people seem to think the more results you get, the better the search. This is incorrect.

It is better to have 3 highly relevant results than 3 million which are irrelevant.

2. Wildcard

A wildcard entry is a useful tool when using Google. A wildcard is a symbol which represents elements of a word or phrase. The Google wildcard is *.

For example, if you use psychol* as a search term it will search for the words psychology, psychologist, psychologists, psychological and so on.

You can also use the wildcard to replace a word.

For example three * mice will look for ‘three blind mice’, ‘three little mice’ and any other phrase beginning with ‘three’ and ending in ‘mice’.

This is useful if you want to refer to several similar words, or even if you’re unsure of the spelling, but it can also result in millions of hits if you’re not specific enough. Use carefully.

3. Boolean

Boolean terms refer to the symbols or words you can use to tell Google how to search.

The three basic terms are: and, or, not.

When you type in ‘mars planet astronomy’, you are really typing in ‘mars OR planet OR astronomy, as ‘or’ is the default term.

You can use + instead of ‘and’, and – instead of ‘not’.

So, you can be more specific. For example:

+real +Madrid +football –beckham

This searches for documents with real AND madrid AND football but NOT beckham

(if you’re interested in Real Madrid, but not David Beckham).

The ‘–beckham’ part of this search eliminates over 200,000 hits.

4. Images

Sometimes when you’re searching for information, it’s hard to find the right search word or phrase. If words aren’t working, why not try pictures?

Try typing your keywords into Google images:

Often, this will lead to you to sites you may not have found by searching text alone.

5. Location

It is useful to be able to narrow down searches to location, for example the UK.

The easiest way to do this is to click on the ‘pages from the UK’ option.

You can also choose to search by location using one of Google’s ‘syntax’ terms, in this case ‘site’:

Typing in site:.co.uk hairdressing.

There is no space between the ‘site’

and ‘.co.uk’.

This will return results for hairdressing ONLY at sites that end with .co.uk

You could use this syntax for any country, as long as you know the correct letter for the country (for example, .au for Australia, .fr for France, .jp for Japan, and so on).

6. Syntax

Syntax is the special ‘language’ that you can use to make Google work better for you.

You can use ‘site’ (as in the last example) to choose a particular location. You can also use it to choose a type of site, e.g. educational:

Site:.ac.uk psychology

This will return results relating to psychology, but ONLY from sites with a .ac.uk designation, in other words educational establishments.

You can be imaginative with this and search particular sites, or types of sites: .bbc.co.uk, ., .info and so on.

There are other terms you can use:

intitle searches for your search terms in the title

intext searches for your search terms in the text of the article

inurl searches in the site’s URL (web address)

cache searches in Google’s cache (memory), even if the original website has been deleted

filetype searches for file extensions, e.g. jpg, pdf and so on.

7. Advanced Search

The advantages of the advanced search should be obvious from the screen. It gives you many options which the simple search doesn’t give you.

Some are highlighted below:

8. Google Directory

Lets you explore hand-picked sites by subject. Pick a subject, then a sub-topic until you reach an area of interest.

You can also search the directory by keyword, as you could with any other area of the web.

9. Google Scholar

Google Scholar is an academic search service, providing the ability to search for scholarly literature located from across the web.

Google Scholar gives you the same search options as Google itself, but searches a more limited, academic database. You can use the same search techniques and syntax to refine your search.

Please note that you may come across password protected content in Google Scholar, and that you may be denied access to the final document, unless you have an institutional user name and password.

10. Explore

It is worth exploring the Google site. There are some fantastic tools available, and new ones are being added constantly.

Google offers blogging technology, maps, Google Earth, office tools, image tools, email, calendar tools, book searches, alerts and much more.

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Keywords or phrases

Choose number of hits displayed

Choose language

Choose file format

Choose how new, and where to search

Choose domain or location, and can I use it?

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