Google Tips and Tricks
Google automatically “ands” search terms, and excludes common words (“stop” words) and most punctuation. Google automatically stems words (use phrase searching to avoid this). Word order in search affects how results are ranked. Use capitalized OR to “or” search terms.
Boolean Operators for Google: OR, +, - , ( )
Quick Look-Ups
| To Find: | Type: | Example: |
| Time anywhere | time location | time Lima |
| Weather anywhere | weather location | weather Edmonton |
| Word definitions | define:term | define:pedantic |
| Stock information | stock:abbreviation | stock:GOOG stock:MMM |
| Get a cached version of a page (When a site is down) | cache:URL | cache:http://www.sclibrary.ab.ca |
Perform conversions and calculations
| To Perform: | Type: | Example: |
| Conversions | x in y | 70 in in m 4 tonnes in pounds |
| Math calculations | numbers and + - * / ( ) | 4*7 (15*3)/7 |
| Currency Conversions | amount in currency | 1 USD in CAD 1 Canadian dollar in Australian currency |
Search limiters - Retrieve fewer results
| To: | Type: | Example: |
| Search within a single site | query site:www.domain.com | cabinet site:www.gov.ab.ca |
| or type of site | query site:.domain | entrance requirements site:.edu |
| Limit to a single file type | query filetype:extension | presentation filetype:ppt |
| Exclude a particular file type | query -filetype:extension | presentation -filetype:ppt |
"Fuzzy" searching--retrieve more results
Tilde (~) adds related terms to a search: for example, “~auto loan” will also retrieve car loan and truck loan
Recommended links:
Googling to the Max [From Berkeley Unviversity] [PDF] - a guide to Google searching features, with a focus on in-depth research.
Google Labs - Google's page for their new and upcoming features and projects
Google and Libraries Wiki - This wiki is based on the Netspeed 2008 Presentation "Google and the Future of the Public Library," delivered by Kay Cahill and Michele Pye. It includes lots of tips on how libraries can use Google features, including some more in-depth ones not covered here.
Answers to questions I sent out:
- Question 1: use a phrase search, eg., "Namey McName" OR "Namey P. McName"
- Question 2: define:alacrity
This function retrieves definitions from all over the Web
- Question 3: 1 Canadian dollar in US dollars, or 1 CAD in USD
Note: This will work even if you don’t know the abbreviation, or even the name of the currency you are looking for. You can just say “Chinese currency” or “Russian currency” or whatever.
- Question 4: search the job name (possibly in parentheses) followed by site:www.macewan.ca. This is mainly helpful if you know the URL of the site you are searching. (Note: Many sites will have their own internal search, but the quality of these search functions varies. This can be a good workaround if you find the internal site search for a particular site is not giving you good results.)
- Question 5: search “hot chilli peppers” –band and/or –music
- Question 6: Time Toronto (This will provide time zone information as well)
- Question 7: Search “effective e-communications” filetype:ppt
Note: The filetype is the actual file extension. .doc for Microsoft Word documents, .txt for text files, .mp3 for MP3s, etc.
- Question 8: use brackets and OR to combine search terms. Recipe (Kenya OR Tanzania OR Uganda)
Meta-Searching
Examples of meta-search engines
- Dogpile
http://www.dogpile.com/ - Surfwax
http://www.surfwax.com/ - Clusty
http://clusty.com/ - MetaCrawler
http://www.metacrawler.com/
How Does Meta-Searching work?
Advantages:
- Can search the deep/hidden web
- Can retrieve more results and a greater variety of results than a single search engine
- Reduces interference from a single search engine—for example, if a page has an artificially high ranking in Google or Yahoo a meta-search engine may help to compensate
- Can provide more in-depth tools for organizing and limiting results
Disadvantages:
- Within aggregated results relevance rankings may be skewed—best results may not always be at the top
- Sponsored results may be interspersed among results without adequate disclosure
- The quality of meta-search results is limited by the quality of the data in the databases being queried. Many meta-search engines use free or small search engines for source data
Recommended link: MetaCrawlers and Meta-Search Engines [Links to many of these services including reviews)
