Library Guides: Animation: Google Searching

Google Tips from Google

Tip 1: Keep it simple

No matter what you're looking for, start with a simple search like where's the closest airport?. You can always add a few descriptive words if necessary. Google ignores small words so don’t type long sentences.

If you're looking for a place or product in a specific location, add the location. For example, bakery seattle.

Tip 2: Search using your voice

Tired of typing? Click the microphone icon in the Google app , or Chrome's search box to search by voice.

Tip 3: Choose words carefully

When you're deciding what words to put in the search box, try to choose words that are likely to appear on the site you're looking for. For example, instead of saying my head hurts, say headache, because that’s the word a medical site would use.

Tip 4: Don’t worry about the little things

Spelling. Google's spell checker automatically uses the most common spelling of a given word, whether or not you spell it correctly.
Capitalization. A search for New York Times is the same as a search for new york times.

Tip 5: Find quick answers

For many searches, Google will do the work for you and show an answer to your question on the search results. Some features, like information about sports teams, aren't available in all regions.

Weather: Search weather to see the weather in your location or add a city name, like weather Seattle, to find weather for a certain place.
Dictionary: Put define in front of any word to see its definition.
Calculations: Enter a math equation like 3*9123, or solve complex graphing equations.
Unit conversions: Enter any conversion, like 3 dollars in euros.
Sports: Search for the name of your team to see a schedule, game scores and more.
Quick facts: Search for the name of a celebrity, location, movie, or song to find important information.

Search Operators in Google

Use search operators to narrow down results

Search operators are words that can be added to searches to help narrow down the results. Don’t worry about memorizing every operator - you can also use the Advanced Search page to create these searches.

Note: When you search using operators, don't add any spaces between the operator and your search terms. A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com will not.

Operator	What you can use it for
site:	Get results from certain sites or domains. For example, you can find all mentions of "olympics" on the NBC website, or any .gov websites. Examples: olympics site:nbc.com and olympics site:.gov or site:ac.uk for academic information or site: museum
link:	Find pages that link to a certain page. For example, you can find all the pages that link to google.com. Example: link:google.com or link:ulster.ac.uk
related:	Find sites that are similar to a URL you already know. If you search for related sites to the time.com, you'll find other news publication sites you may be interested in. Example: related:time.com
OR	If you want to search for pages that may have just one of several words, include OR (capitalized) between the words. Without the OR, your results would typically show only pages that match both terms. Example: world cup location 2014 OR 2018
info:	Get information about a URL, including the cached version of the page, similar pages, and pages that link to the site. Example: info:google.com
and	Google automatically searches for all terms so there is no need to use ‘and’.
-	Exclude a word or site from your list of results. This is useful for words with multiple meanings, like Jaguar the car brand and jaguar the animal. Examples: jaguar speed -car and pandas -site:wikipedia.org
intitle	If necessary, restrict your search to words appearing only in the title of the document eg intitle: “sleep deprivation”
Filetype	Limit your search results to those of a particular type eg human rights filetype:pdf
cache:	See what a page looks like the last time Google crawled the site. Example: cache:washington.edu

Google Punctuation

You can use special characters and words to get more specific search results. Except for the examples below, most punctuation is ignored. For example, a search for dogs! is seen by Google as dogs.

Punctuation & symbols that Google Search recognizes

Even though the symbols below are supported, including them in your searches doesn’t always improve the results. If we don't think the punctuation will give you better results, you may see suggested results for that search without punctuation.

Note: When you search using symbols, don't add any spaces between the symbol and your search terms. A search for -dogs will work, but - dogs will not.

Symbol	What you can use it for
+	Search for Google+ pages or blood types Examples: +Chrome and AB+
@	Find social tags Example: @agoogler
$	Find prices Example: nikon $400
#	Find popular hashtags for trending topics Example: #throwbackthursday
-	Connect words When the dash is in between multiple words, Google will know the words are strongly connected. Example: twelve-year-old dog
_	Connect two words like quick_sort. Your search results will find this pair of words either linked together (quicksort) or connected by an underscore (quick_sort).
"	When you put a word or phrase in quotes, the results will only include pages with the same words in the same order as what's inside the quotes. Note: Only use this if you're looking for an exact word or phrase, otherwise you'll exclude many helpful results by mistake. Example: "imagine all the people"
*	Add an asterisk within a search as a placeholder for any unknown or wildcard terms. Use with quotation marks to find variations of that exact phrase or to remember words in the middle of a phrase. Example: *"a saved is a * earned"**
..	Separate numbers by two periods without spaces (..) to see results that contain numbers in a given range of things like dates, prices, and measurements. Example: camera $50..$100 or dates 1980..1990

More Information on Google Searching

Karen Blakenman’s blog
Very useful, search tips and more....
Google on Youtube
Google Support

Advanced Search

Advanced Search

Don’t worry if you can’t recall these search tips, they are all present in the Advanced search options. Click Settings and choose Advanced Search.

Narrow down search results for complex searches by using the Advanced Search page. For example, find websites written in Spanish that have "Paella" in the title and were updated in the last 24 hours. Or find black and white images of New York.

Get to the Advanced Search page

Advanced Search for websites: Go to www.google.com/advanced_search or click the gear icon in the top right corner of a search results page > Advanced Search.
Advanced Search for images: Go to www.google.com/advanced_image_search or click the gear icon in the top right corner of an image search results page > Advanced Search.

How the Advanced Search page works

Go to the Advanced Search page.
Enter your search terms in the “Find pages with” section.
Choose the filters you want to use in the “Then narrow your results by” section. You can use one or more filters.
Click Advanced Search

Filters

Search filters include Web News Images Books Video

Search tools option will open additional filters depending on the initial filter, eg web: date, reading level, country; images: size, colour, type, usage rights;
Books: ebook, free ebook, publication date;
Video: length, quality date

Tip: You can also use many of these filters in the search box with search operators.