How to Use Google to Search Effectively

Technology TrainingFebruary – March 2014

The Basics

Every day Google answers more than one billion questions from people around the world in 181 countries and 146 languages

15% of the searches each day have never been searched before

In 2011, Google’s search and advertising tools helped provide $80 billion of economic activity for over 1.8 million businesses.

94% of US teachers say their students equate “research” with using Google* *Pew Research Center: Internet & American Life Project

How Google Works

The SpiderThe “spider” visits each website and takes a copy of each page multiple times a day so when you do a search, you are actually searching all the copies the spider has made, not the actual websitesSpamSome websites pack a page full of keywords over and over again to try and get a search engine to think the page is especially relevant for that topic.

Spammers might put the words “Sony Television” on their site when the page is really a Viagra advertisement

AdvertisementsIf you enter a question – answer sites will come up firstIf you enter “Wind Power” because you want to know the history, you will see Ads for Wind Power come up first

Synonyms

Flash Drive = thumb drive

Death tax = estate tax

*Constantly changing

Before You Search – Stop & Think

You want to search for your ANWSER – not your question

Real-Life Searches

Predictive SearchMethod for drawing on what you already know about the subjectIncludes successful word choice and using Google’s filters to uncover information

Forget “The”, “My”, “A”

Who v. The Who v. a Who

A little word can make all the difference!

Capitalization & Punctuation

Capitalization does not matter!

The only punctuation that does matter:

$, # (hashtag), C++ or Google+

Word Order

grass snake vs. snake grass vs. snake in the grass

Word Choice

When did the first basketball team play for money?

vs.

When did basketball become a professional sport?

Positive Narrowing

Search ToolsTime frame (most recent information) Compare how an event was viewed at the time and then later on

Reading Level Results shown by basic, intermediate and advanced reading levels

Verbatim Results shown include ALL the search words you entered

Detailed Searching

Question I want to see samples of lesson plans on climate change that were created based

on Understanding by DesignSearch

climate change lesson plan

Better Searchclimate change lesson plan essential questions

Geographical Targeting

Search Edward Snowden

Search Site:RU Edward Snowden

Remember the authors – your search has to align itself with countryThe Iran Hostage Crisis would not be “Iran Hostage Crisis” in Iranian

websites!

List of Country Codeshttp://www.orchidbox.com/post.php?title=list_of_Google_websites_with_country_codes

Google Operators

Search for an exact word or phrase Use quotes “imagine all the people”

good for song lyrics or a line from literature

Exclude a wordAdd a dash (-) before a word or site to exclude all results that include that word

Site searchTo search within a certain website use site:website name

(site:nytimes.com)To search everywhere but a certain website –site:Wikipedia.com

More Google Operators

Number rageSeparate numbers by two periods (..) to see results that contain numbers in a

given range of things like dates, prices and measurements

Related URLFind sites that are similar to a URL you already know (related:website

address)

Make Searching Safer

Google’s kid friendly search enginesafesearchkids.com

Filter explicit resultsgoogle.com/preferences

Resources

Google’s Education Sitehttp://www.google.com/insidesearch/searcheducation/

Google’s Advanced Searchwww.google.com/advanced_search or access through pull down menu from gear

icon

Google Search Operatorshttps://support.google.com/websearch/answer/136861?hl=en