Getting better results from GoogleThis sheet looks at how you can get more focused results from Google. To try some

of these features go to: www.google.co.uk

When you search Google:

Every word matters. Generally, all the words you put in the query will be used.

Search is always case insensitive. A search for new york times is the same as

a search for New York Times.

Generally, punctuation is ignored, including @#$%^&*()=+ and other special

characters.

Source: Google help pages

The problem with conducting a simple search in Google is that too many results are

returned making it hard to manage the results. To find relevant information on

Google you need to use the advanced search features.

IntitleUse intitle:keyword to return pages with your keyword in the title. Any other words

you have put in the search will be found in the main text of the website.

In the above example we are asking for results with recession in the title with the

word UK anywhere else in the text.

Domain searching

The domain name of the website is basically the address; it can tell you the origin of

the website. Google lets you limit your search to particular type of sites. In the

example below we are looking for information on absenteeism from academic

institutions in the UK as we know that all academic institutions in the UK have .ac.uk

at the end of their web address.

You can also limit your search to websites from certain countries.

Here is a table of some common domains:

Domain Origination.com Commercial company (USA)

.co.uk Commercial site (UK)

.org.uk non-profit making organisation (UK)

.edu academic / educational site (USA)

.ac.uk academic site (UK)

.gov.uk government site (UK)

.de site from Germany

.fr sites from France

.in sites from India

Searching within a Specific siteThis is a useful feature where you need some information from within a particular

web site. We may want an online copy of the Harvard Referencing Guide from the

DMU library. We would use keywords (harvard referencing) and then specify which

website you want to search in site:www.library.dmu.ac.uk

Searching for filetypes

We can also limit searches to results of specific filetypes, such as powerpoint (ppt),

Word document (doc) or pdf.

In the above search we are looking for pdf articles on HSBC.

Excluding termsYou may want to narrow your search to exclude certain words. To do this put a

minus sign immediately in front of the word you want to exclude.

In the above example (marketing –PR) we get pages on marketing but which do not

mention PR.

Broadening your search

Phrase searchingPutting your keywords in speech marks tells Google to search for the exact terms

within the speech marks. This can be very useful where you have two words that you

want to appear together. For example a search for “business ethics” will return

results about business ethics; whereas if you conducted the search without the

speech marks you would get results that have the word business and ethics

somewhere in the website though not necessarily together.

The phrase search can also be useful to complete sentences. If we conducted the

following search "the 1932 summer Olympics were held in" we should get websites

that complete the sentence in full, thus telling us where were the 1932 Olympics

were held.

A word of caution: you must spell exactly the words you place in the speech marks,

Google will not try and guess what you are looking for. If you search for

“organisational behaviour” websites that spell the concept the US way,

organizational behavior, will be excluded. Also if you are looking for a person, for

example “Michael Porter” results where he is known by his full name, Michael E.

Porter, will again, be excluded.

Truncation

If you have a word that can have multiple endings then it is a good option to use

truncation. There is a wildcard option in Google this is an asterisks (*). Putting * after

a word tells Google to search for multiple endings. For example account* returns

results for accounting, accountancy, accountants, accounts, etc ... Thus it saves you

having to put multiple words into the search box.

Synonym function ~Synonyms are words that mean exactly or nearly the same as another word.

Google’s synonym function uses the tilde symbol (~, this is above the # key).

Added directly before a word for example ~branding, Google looks for results include

words similar to branding.

In

the above search by removing the tilde symbol you get 5 times more results.

Advanced search page in Google

The search features presented above work in the basic search box. If you were to

utilise all of the features, however, the search may become cumbersome. Another

option is to use the advanced search page – this gives options, as above, to limit or

broaden your search but in a more structured way.

Conduct a simple search in Google. We will look for “business ethics” in the banking

sector (bank* “business ethics”).

There are over 43 million results so we need to focus our search.

Notice that the cog appears under the search box.

Click on the cog and select Advanced search.

A page opens with new search options.

Now we can see that we can add limiters to focus our

search such as language, file type, domain, region and

when the site was last updated.

In the above example you can see that we have used the advanced search page to

find results on business ethics in banking, presented in a pdf format from UK

educational institutions.

Now we have just over 24,000 results.

We could have done the same search in a basic search box:

(bank* “business ethics” site:.ac.uk filetype:pdf)

However, some people find using the advanced search pages easier to construct a

complex search. Either way you select will yield the same results.

End of help sheet