Google Search

 

Google Search Tips

You can use symbols or terms in your search to make your search results more precise. Here's an overview of some of the most useful Google search tricks.

  • Putting double quotes around a phrase will find only that exact phrase. (ex: "global warming")

  • Google's default is to look for all the words in your search. Using OR (must be capitalized) will allow you to look for any one or more of the words. (ex: car OR automobile)

  • This search tells Google to limit your search to a particular site or domain. For instance, if you limit to site:gov would search only sites ending in .gov, and site:edu would search only sites ending in .edu.

  • Adding a minus sign "-" in front of words will remove results with that exact term. This can be very helpful when removing common words associated with your topic. (ex: dolphins -miami)

  • Using filetype: will only find certain file extensions (.doc, .pdf, .xcl, etc)

  • link:X Will list sites that gives link to the URL.

  • Search social media
    Put @ in front of a term to search social media. For example: @twitter.

  • Search hashtags
    Puting # in front of a word. For example: #

  • Use “DEFINE:” to learn the meaning of words

You can also combine some of these search tricks, such as adding -site:nytimes.com to remove results from the New York Times website.  Click here to find more search tips.

You can use Google Advanced Search Page if you forget the search operators above. 

Google Image Search

You can use a photo or graphic to search for images through Google's Image Search. If you save the image, and then search it on Google Images (with the camera button), you’ll be able to see similar images on the web.

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Related Pages

 
 

About Google

Google has no idea what your search words mean. It looks for web pages where those words appear. Know what you're looking for and use related words or synonyms to get better search results.   This Google chart will help you search smarter!

To know more, Read about how Google's search algorithm works here.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar allows you to search across a wide range of academic literature. It draws on information from journal publishers, university repositories, and other websites that it has identified as scholarly.

Google Scholar is designed to help you discover scholarly sources that exist on your topic.   It is primarily an index, but some articles link to the full text.