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Google: How To Leverage the Power of Internet Searching

Get the most from your Internet searches by learning the best strategies, tips, and tools available when using the Google search engine.

About How Google Works

 

How exactly does Google Search work?

Google uses a trademarked search technology (PageRank™) algorithm which combines several elements including:

  • Popularity: the number of links to and from that same page
  • Importance: hits and online traffic and functioning of links (do the links work)
  • Proximity: where your search terms are in relation to each other and the number of times they occur in the results

Search with Google

 

Google Web Search

Google Search Tips

 

Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google, provides tips for searching.

Google Student Blog RSS

 

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Learn a Google Game

 

Here's a great way to learn how to search Google more efficiently.

Play A Google A Day!

Basic Search

 

You probably use Google often and have for quite a while.  However, research has shown that most users lack some basic information about how to effectively search the Internet using Google.

Here are some useful techniques to help you become a better Google user.

Use Synonyms combined with “OR”

There are many ways to state your search term or topic. If you are searching for “female” consider using “girl” or “woman” as well.

Combine the synonyms you have listed with "OR." The word  “OR” must be in capitals otherwise Google will ignore it.

Example: global warming OR climate change

Quotation Marks

Use quotation marks around phrases to be sure Google searches for the phrase and not the single words. This is useful when you are searching for proper names.

Example: “Jack Layton”

Search Sites

Search within a specific website by entering your search term followed by site:sitedomain.

Example: You are interested in “leadership” within the federal government of Canada agencies. Entering leadership site:gc.ca will return results about leadership from Government of Canada websites. 

  • site:gc.ca this searches the government of Canada websites
  • site:gov.bc.ca searches only BC government sites
  • site:org searches non-profit organization sites
  • site:ca searches websites with the domain .ca for Canada
  • site:.edu searches websites from most universities and colleges in the United States

Exclude Terms

Use the minus sign "-" to exclude terms

Example: jockey -underwear will return results about horse jockeys, and exclude anything about the brand of underwear.

Search Website Titles

You can make a search more precise by limiting your search words to the title of the page e.g. allintitle:climate change

Search for specific document types:

You can search for specific document types by adding the command filetype: to the end of your search. This allows you to search for pdfs, PowerPoint presentations, Excel files and others e.g. filetype:pdf, filetype:ppt, filetype:xls

For more information about Basic Google search strategies see Basic Search Help.

 

 

Google Commands

 

Search ServiceSearch Operators
Web Search allinanchor:, allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl:, cache:, define:, filetype:, id:, inanchor:, info:, intext:, intitle:, inurl:, link:, phonebook:, related:, site:
Image Search allintitle:, allinurl:, filetype:, inurl:, intitle:, site:
Groups allintext:, allintitle:, author:, group:, insubject:, intext:, intitle:
Directory allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl:, ext:, filetype:, intext:, intitle:, inurl:
News allintext:, allintitle:, allinurl:, intext:, intitle:, inurl:, location:, source:
Product Search allintext:, allintitle:

Source: http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html