Using Google as part of your research can provide excellent results to complement those found in a scholarly database. These results can take the form of government reports, population statistics, university webpages, or commercial and non-commercial materials, to name a few.
To save time and retrieve more reliable results, incorporate the tips and tricks below into your Google searching.
Choosing accurate terminology can determine the quality of results that you retrieve. You should search with proper language whenever possible.
Example: Instead of searching the term "baby blues", try "postpartum depression".
To be more efficient with your Google searching, be sure to put exact phrases into quotation marks. When quotations are used, Google will find only results that include the whole phrase, not each individual word.
Example: World War Two (173,000,000 results), or "World War Two" (4,610,000 results).
You can choose to include single words separated by a semi-colon (example: fish; seafood), as well as enter phrases that must also appear in the result (example: "anaphylactic shock"). Omitting certain words is also an option here, using the "none of these words" box, as well as specifying if any numbers need to appear in the result within a certain range (example: 10.35 lb).
There are a number of useful filters found within Google's Advanced search. Using a combination of these can shorten your research time and give you more accurate results. To find the Google Advanced window, you can start at Google and simply search "Google Advanced Search" and select the first result. Alternatively, you can find it using the gear icon near the top right corner of any Google search results page.
See below for examples of Google Advanced Search filters.
Enter a specific website that your results must come from. Here are some examples:
Enter the suffix for the type of website your results must come from. Here are some examples:
Specify a file type to narrow down your results even more. Here are some examples:
Try searching with one or more of the Advanced Search filters available through Google such as: language, region, last update, terms appearing, safe search, and usage rights.
