You have been using Google for years, and you know how to use it, right? You generally find what you are searching for, right? Maybe not, there are some tricks you might use to make your Googling skills more effective and efficient. After learning about some of these trick in articles from the How-To Geek website and the Atlantic we thought we would share the few we found to be helpful.
Operators are key
If you are hoping to find very specific information through a Google search, operators are the most useful way to find what you are looking for. The example that the How-To Geek site used is as follows. Say a user wishes to find stories only published by the New York Times relating to college test scores. That is very specific and feels like it would take a lot of digging. Not if you utilize operators. By inserting the operator “site:” in front of the words “nytimes.com,” Google will only search in that site. Then by adding quotation marks around exact phrases they are looking for, in this case “test scores,” Google will search for that exact phrase only. If the user desires to add a date range, they can add 2008..2010 and it will narrow the search further.
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is another great way to narrow search results. It asks Google to only search academic and scholarly work, which would be great for research papers. To do this you can employ operators. For instance, if you are looking for a paper written by Dr. Breit about the evolution of coding languages, you’d input the operator “author:” in front of “Breit” followed by the phrase “evolution of coding languages” into Google Scholar.
Control F
“Control F” is a way to search within your search results. For example, perhaps you are searching for a new outfit to wear to a holiday party. After searching for “party dress” you can hold control on your keyboard and click “F.” A small search bar will pop up in the top or bottom of your screen and in it you can search your results by typing “pink” or “long” to further narrow your search.
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