While searching Google may be a breeze, you will often find that you get so many results it can be overwhelming! This page has some tips and tricks that will help you find websites in search engines like Google more effectively and efficiently. Below are a few smart search strategies to help you navigate Google.
There are several different website domains we will find on Google. Some of these are nonrestricted (.com and .org) and some are restricted (.gov and .edu).
Restricted domains are only available to certain types of organizations or institutions. So if your website ends in .edu, you know that it has to be published by an educational institution. Similarly, only government organizations will have websites that end in .gov.
Nonrestricted domains, such as .com or .org, can be used by anyone.
So what if you only want to search a specific domain? Luckily, there is an easy way to do that! In the search bar, after your search words, type in site:.edu or the domain you would like to search.
For example: the three branches of government site:.edu
When searching for sources, think carefully about what keywords will find you the best results. For example, in our sample search, I entered the three branches of government as my keyword. While that pulled up a lot of results, I might want to also think about using alternative keywords, such as the separation of powers as this is the purpose of the three branches of government. In addition to finding alternative keywords, it can also help to narrow your results by adding modifying words such as the United States of America. Another option I could take is to narrow my search by searching specifically for one of the three branches. For example, the legislative branch.
Once you have identified your keywords, you can begin to enter your search terms into the search bar. Since you usually have multiple concepts that you want to include (ex. three branches of government, and United States), you can use Boolean operators to connect them.
Boolean Operators, the words AND, OR, and NOT, are used to connect and define the relationship between your keywords and main concepts. Using Boolean operators in a search will help to narrow or expand your search results. See below for a few example of how to search Google using Boolean Operators. Note that instead of NOT, Google recognizes a - sign. This is the only significant difference between using Boolean Operators in Google and a library database.
Example Searches:
Quotations are used to combine keywords into a keyword phrase. This is particularly useful in narrowing down your results. By putting quotes around two or more words, they will have to appear in the exact sequence within your results.
Ex. “three branches of government” will return results that use that exact phrase and don't contain only the words three, branches, or government. These words may still appear separately in the website, in addition to appearing as the phrase.