Tips and Tricks

Panthers Instructional Technology Academy

Describe what you need with as few terms as possible.

Since all words are used, each additional word limits the results.

For example, [ weather cancun ] is a simple way to find the weather and likely to give better results than the longer

[ weather report for cancun mexico ].

BASIC SEARCH TIPS

CaPiTaLIZATION doesn’t MaTtEr

You get the same results if you search New York or new york

Both searches returned the same number of hits –

797,000,000

KEEP IT SIMPLE!

USING QUOTATION MARKS “ ”

Use “” IF YOU ARE SEARCHING FOR A SPECIFIC PHRASE OR PERSON’S NAME

Searches the exact words in that exact order without any change.

“to be or not to be”

DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS

To get a list of definitions use define:

SYNONYM SEARCHING USING THE TILDE ~

Putting a tilde ~ in front of the word car automatically includes synonyms in the search, increasing the results from about 90 million to 123 million.

SIMILAR CONTENT

ANOTHER EXAMPLE related:www.philadelphiazoo.org

Related: finds other websites related to the one you enter.

GOOGLE BOOKS

Google Books can be accessed from the more link.

Content includes the full text of many digitized books and magazines, including searchable LIFE magazine.

Wonder Wheel & TimelineAfter you enter your search term(s), click “Show options” to get other search choices, like Wonder wheel & Timeline.

TIME CONVERTER

CALCULATOR

Calculator operators

+ addition / division

- Subtraction %of percentage of

* multiplication ^ raise to a power

NUMERIC PARAMETERS

USE TWO NUMERIC PARAMETERS WITH TWO DOTS .. IN BETWEEN TO SEARCH WITHIN A RANGE OF NUMBERS

FILL IN THE BLANK

USING THE MINUS SIGN TO LIMIT YOUR RESULTS

Don’t forget: N

o space

between the m

inus

and the word to

exclude!

You can use Google to convert between many different units of measurement of height, weight, and volume, among many others.

UNIT CONVERSION

SITE LIMITER USING SITE:

SPECIFY THAT YOUR RESULTS MUST COME FROM A CERTAIN WEBSITE

This search includes websites about Iraq only from The New York Times.

DOMAIN SITE LIMITER USING SITE:

DOMAINS: . gov .mil .uk .fr .de .com .org .biz .edu

In this example using site:edu only finds websites about cloning from educational institutions.

Use any domain limiter to narrow your search results.

REMEMBER

Keep it simple –all the words count.

Brainstorm some keywords BEFORE you search.

Use the handy cheat sheet handout.

Excellence is just a mouse click away!

Panthers Instructional Technology Academy

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www.wssd.org/google

Future Workshops

February 11, 24

Doing More with Databases