IMPROVE YOUR GOOGLE SEARCHES

USING MY 15 TOP TRICKS, TECHNIQUES, AND TIPS

Dr. John V. Richardson Jr., UCLA Professor of Information Studies

2011 Bruin Woods at Lake Arrowhead, California

Objectives: understand how Google works--keyword searching as opposed to controlled vocabulary as well as backlink analysis (i.e., popularity of pages).

1) Use all of the information you have (up to 32 words; don’t just type in Britney, although that may work!)

2) Use quotations marks to force an exact match of your phrase

3) Use the plus (+) sign to override the stop words (such as a, an, and or the, for instance)

4) Use the minus (–) sign to exclude words (such as anti-virus –software or ebooks -free)

5) Use a tilde (~) in front of a term to get synonyms (such as ~tutorial)

6) Use define: term to find a definition (such as define:antiestablishmentarianism

or define:Bruin)

7) Use search term and “site:ucla.edu” or other institution to find authoritative websites

8) Use the search term and “related:” to find similar websites

9) Use search term filetype:pdf to find that kind of document (UCLA filetype:pdf)

10) Use one good website and link: (to see who else links to it)

11) Use a range of values: years, dollars, or cities (e.g., fashion icons 1920…1960 or computers $500...$800 or LAX…ASB; note Nikon 400 is not the same as Nikon $400 in a Google search)

12) Mathematical calculations are possible (such as the sqrt(pi) )

13) Unit conversions are also possible (such as kg in pounds)

14) Dollar conversions as well (such as USD in Euro)

Secret tip #15: When in doubt, be sure to look at all of the many different help features of Google at http://www.google.com/help/features.html and be sure to see the advanced search features/operators at http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html