how to....
Search more effectively using Google
Google is a powerful search engine that has two advantages over most other search engines:
1) It automatically returns only web sites that have ALL the search terms
you have entered. No need to put a + sign in front of your search term
to indicate that it must be included.
2) It ranks your results by popularity, so the most frequently viewed
pages are at the top of the list. This usually means that the most useful
sites are at the top of the list.
You can use Google even more effectively if you remember the following tips:
- Quotation marks. Use quotation marks to search for an entire
phrase. For example, "digital divide" should be enclosed
in quotation marks. You can combine phrases with other search terms
for even more specific results, for example searching for: "digital
divide" gender would help you find pages that talk about the
gender gap in Internet use.
- Site-specific searches. If you know of a web site that is a
good source of information for a given field, but you need to find a
specific piece of information within that site, you can conduct a site-specific
search from the main Google search page. Let's say you want to find
information about race and the digital divide on a web site called the
Digital Divide Network (http://www.digitaldividenetwork.org). In the
Google search field you would enter the terms race site:digitaldividenetwork.org
Google would then search for every appearance of the word race on the
Digital Divide Network site.
- Search results. When you conduct a search in Google, it tells
you how many search results it has found. If that number is 50,000 you
can be pretty sure you need to narrow your search terms. Until you get
down to 1,000 or 2,000 results, you can usually assume that your search
is too general to be useful. Keep trying different combination of search
terms until your number gets low enough that you are likely to have
predominantly useful results -- 250 or less is ideal.
- Similar pages. If you succeed in finding a really useful site,
try clicking the "similar pages" link. Google will show you
other sites that may be useful.
- Cached pages. If you get a "page not found" error
when you try to visit one of the sites in your results list, try using
Google's "Cached" function. Google essentially creates its
own backup version of the web, so if the web site you are looking for
has disappeared, Google may be able to load its own cached version of
the site.
- Translate pages. If you want to view a page that is only available
in another language, follow the link to "Translate this page".
The translation will be a bit rough (computers still aren't great translators)
but if you know a bit of the original language this can help you to
figure out what the site is about.
- Image search. If you want to find an image to illustrate your
work or web page, try Google's image search page.
- Google groups. Google now runs its own web-based archives of
the Usenet (the home of newsgroups online). You can find interesting
material in Usenet discussions, especially if you are looking for a
window on popular opinion or grassroots discussions on a given group.
Just go to the "Groups" page from Google's main page, and
run your search from there.