SEARCHING GOOGLE

Choosing Search Items

Choosing the right search terms is the key to finding the information you need.

Start with the obvious – if you're looking for general information on Hawaii, try Hawaii.

But it's often advisable to use multiple search terms; if you're planning a Hawaiian vacation, you'll do better with vacation Hawaii than with either vacation or Hawaii by themselves. And vacation Hawaii golf may produce even better (or, depending on your perspective, worse) results.

You might also ask yourself if your search terms are sufficiently specific. It's better to search on luxury hotels Maui than on tropical island hotels. But choose your search terms carefully; Google looks for the search terms you chose, so luxury hotels Maui will probably deliver better results than really nice places to spend the night in Maui.

Capitalization

Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the same results.

Automatic "and" queries

By default, Google only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms. For example, to plan a vacation to Hawaii, simply type vacation hawaii.

Automatic Exclusion of Common Words

Google ignores common words and characters such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters, because they tend to slow down your search without improving the results. Google will indicate if a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the results page below the search box.

If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)

Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around two or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., "where are you") are included in the search.

For example, to search for Star Wars, Episode I, use:

Star Wars Episode+1

or

"Star Wards Episode 1"

Words variations (stemming)

Google now uses stemming technology. Thus, when appropriate, it will search not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms. If you search for pet lemur dietary needs, Google will also search for pet lemur diet needs, and other related variations of your terms. Any variants of your terms that were searched for will be highlighted in the snippet of text accompanying each result.

Phrase searches

Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search terms.

"the long and winding road"

Phrase searches are particularly effective if you're searching for proper names ("George Washington"), lyrics ("the long and winding road"), or other famous phrases ("This was their finest hour").

Negative terms

If your search term has more than one meaning (bass, for example, could refer to fishing or music) you can focus your search by putting a minus sign ("-") in front of words related to the meaning you want to avoid.

For example, here's how you'd find pages about bass-heavy lakes, but not bass-heavy music:

bass -music

Note: when you include a negative term in your search, be sure to include a space before the minus sign.

I'm Feeling Lucky

After you've entered your search terms, you might want to try the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, which takes you straight to the most relevant website that Google found for your query. You won't see the search results page at all, but if you did, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" site would be listed on top.

For example, if you're looking for the Stanford University homepage, just enter Stanford and click "I'm Feeling Lucky" instead of the Google Search button. Google will take you directly to "www.stanford.edu."

Synonym search

If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign ("~") immediately in front of your search term.

For example, here's how to search for food facts and nutrition and cooking information:

~food ~facts

"OR" search

To find pages that include either of two search terms, add an uppercase OR between the terms.

For example, here's how to search for a vacation in either London or Paris:

vacation london OR paris

Domain Search

You can use Google to search only within one specific website by entering the search terms you're looking for, followed by the word "site" and a colon followed by the domain name.

For example, here's how you'd find admission information on the Stanford University site:

admission site:www.stanford.edu

Number Search

Feel like a number? Numrange searches for results containing numbers in a given range. Just add two numbers, separated by two periods, with no spaces, into the search box along with your search terms. You can use Numrange to set ranges for everything from dates ( Willie Mays 1950..1960) to weights ( 5000..10000 kg truck). But be sure to specify a unit of measurement or some other indicator of what the number range represents.

For example, here's how you'd search for a DVD player that costs between $50 and $100:

DVD player $50..$100

With that, I hope you'll now be able to find what you're looking for on the Internet better with Google.