The search tool you use will depend on the results you want.
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Basic search engine
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Results
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Google, obviously, but there are others, such as:
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An online search engine will bring back results from the whole internet, but you are most likely to see these kinds of results in the first several pages: Websites of all kinds--commercial, organizational, educational. Wikipedia entries Headline news stories Advertisements, items for sale |
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Advanced Googling
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Results
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| Google News | News stories from newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, some magazines. |
| Google Advanced Search | Choose a website type (.gov or .edu, for example) or filetype such as .pdf or ppt. (Powerpoint). |
| Google Scholar | Articles from scholarly journals (be aware that most will not be available full-text). |
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Library Resources
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Results
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Books Ebooks Journal articles (trade, scholarly, peer-reviewed) Video In short, anything the library has or has access to electronically. |
| Databases |
Newspaper and magazine articles Articles from scholarly journals Video Transcripts from television and radio broadcasts Note: some databases will provide access to discipline-specific materials, such as medical research, legal cases, etc. |
1. Use quotes to search for an exact phrase
This one’s a well-known, simple trick: searching a phrase in quotes will yield only pages with the same words in the same order as what’s in the quotes. It’s one of the most vital search tips, especially useful if you’re trying to find results containing a specific a phrase.
2. Use an asterisk within quotes to specify unknown or variable words
Here’s a lesser known trick: searching a phrase in quotes with an asterisk replacing a word will search all variations of that phrase. It’s helpful if you’re trying to determine a song from its lyrics, but you couldn’t make out the entire phrase (e.g. “imagine all the * living for today”), or if you’re trying to find all forms of an expression (e.g. “* is thicker than water”).
3. Use the minus sign to eliminate results containing certain words
You’ll want to eliminate results with certain words if you’re trying to search for a term that’s generating a lot of results that aren’t of interest to you. Figure out what terms you’re not interested in (e.g. jaguar -car) and re-run the search.
4. Search images using images
Ever come across a photo that looks strangely familiar? Or if you want to know where it came from? 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.
~ Adapted from "Google Tricks That Will Change the Way You Search."