In Part 1, we looked at how to THINK before you start searching. Remember that the goal is to find what you seek in ONE search.
Here are some other ways you can “make Google Dance” as you search the web. MOST of these tips will also work for DuckDuckGo.com, and possibly the other search engines as well.
Note that much of this material is drawn from an article from macsales.com
Site-Specific searching.
If you’d like to search a specific website [macon, com, for example], then add “site:domain_mane” to the end of your search.
For example:
should find every mention of the school at the macon.com website.
Getting rid of some results
Let’s say you are researching “fording a river”, but you keep getting results for Ford vehicles. You can use the minus sign to remove articles about the cars, which would make it easier to find what you seek;
Make CERTAIN a search term is in the results
Sometime the search engine gives you results that DON’T contain your search terms, or the results contain SOME of them. You can force the results to contain the terms by using the plus sign.
Specify an EXACT search term
Use force your results to contain the phrase as is – this is very useful when searching for someone’s name.
Leave out results from certain domains.
Let’s say you were looking for info on Apple products, but wanted results that are NOT from apple.com. That is easy by using the minus sign [again].
The minus sign works with “top level domains” – as in .edu, .com, etc. So you could block out any .com sites in that Apple search.
Search just the Title of the page
You can use “intitle:” to search JUST the title of a page.
You can use multiple intitles to make sure multiple words are int he title:
intitle:Macon intitle:GA intitle:Music
Search just the text in a result
Have the engine search JUST the text on a site with the intext: option
intext:cavaliers intext:”Mount de Sales” intext:school
Search a sub-area of a site
Suppose you wanted to search JUST the support area of Microsoft site for some info. Use the “inurl:” option to do just that:
surface reinstall site:microsoft.com inurl:support
Wildcards
Use the asterisk to represent ANYTHING. That is useful if you aren’t quite sure of what you are looking for, or if you’d like to know what info is available about something general.
Search a specific date range
If you are looking for info relating to a particular computer, or car, for a specific year, the “after:” and “before:” options will save you some time.
So if you are loking for info about teh Ford Mustand, but only the models from teh late 1960’s, you would search this:
Ford mustang after:1964-01-01 before:1969-12-12
NOTE: you do NOT have to use the entire yerar-month-day format. You could search
Ford mustang after:1964 before:1970
Use the Tools Menu
That is another way to search by date and time.
Boolean Operators
No, these aren’t words that will get you into trouble. They refer to ways to require ALL of your search terms or ANY of them in your search results, by using the words “AND” and “OR”. They can be used with ANY of the above options.
So if I want to search for a Ryobi one+ air compressor, but limited to Homedepot, Lowes, and Ace Hardware:
ryobi one+ air compressor site:homedepot.com OR site:lowes.com OR site:acehardware.com
Notice that the results only give homedepot.com – because neither Lowe’s nor Ace Hardware carry Ryobi.
Use AND if you want to make sure ALL of your terms are included in the results. Again, this can be used with any of the tips above.
Mount de Sales AND Catholic -Macon should give us the Mount de Sales Catholic schools that are not in Macon.
AROUND
This is one that few people know about. You can have the engine look for words that are close to each other, but not necessarily next to each other.
Advanced Search
If you are having trouble finding, and have learned to THINK about your search, then dive into advanced search. At the top-right corner, click Settings, then Advanced Search. There are a lot of options here, but most are easy to figure out.
FINAL ADVICE:
- DO NOT GIVE UP. There are a gazillion ways to find what you seek on the Web.
- THINK about what you are looking for. Be as specific as possible.
- Contact Tech, or visit the ARC, to get more advice [but ONLY after you have tried these tips and are just absolutely out of ideas.]