Precision Surfing using
Google’s advanced
operators
for journalists
Master Google’s advanced commands to mine
Google for better research results - faster
Friday, 19 June 2009 1

Colin Meek is Consulting Editor to Journalism.co.uk
He has delivered his Advanced Online Research course to
journalists, policy analysts and market researchers for four
years.
For more information see:
http://www.journalism.co.uk/36/43/98/
Or visit his blog at:
http://www.journalism.co.uk/insite
Friday, 19 June 2009 2

Avoid confusion
illustrate
Image licensed under creative commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tronics/380379732/
Friday, 19 June 2009 3

Google’s ‘advanced operators’ are
used to pin-point results that normal
search strategies can’t reach
You can use Google’s ‘advanced’ search
form,
but used correctly, operators can cut to
the chase faster, giving you better and
more focused results
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Precision Surfing using
google’s advanced operators
• Use advanced operators for more precision and
flexibility.
• Type them directly into the google search field
• Command google to look only:
• at specific sites;
• for specific document types; or,
• for search terms in specific places.
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Look at this search string:
business opportunities “london olympics” ~advice
site:.com
• site:.com restricts the search to ‘.com’
websites only.
• ~advice searches for synonyms of advice
such as ‘help’ or ‘guide’
• “london olympics” acts as a phrase search
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• focused
results
• from relevant
agencies and
companies
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Look at this search string:
site:.nhs.uk ~support mrsa filetype:pdf
• site:nhs.uk restricts the search to NHS sites
• ~support searches for synonyms of support
such as ‘help’ or ‘guide’
• filetype:pdf restricts the search only to PDF
documents
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• results only
from .nhs.uk
sites
• include
synonyms of
‘support’
• are all PDFs
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• Combine advanced operators with key
search terms to craft precise search strings.
• Sometimes called ‘forensic surfing’
• Let’s look at each ‘advanced operator’ in
turn.....
Friday, 19 June 2009 10

site:www.hpa.org.uk
• searches only in the www.hpa.org.uk site
Friday, 19 June 2009 11

inurl:mrsa
• this will only return pages that contain the
term ‘mrsa’ in their urls
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filetype:pdf norovirus
• will only search for norovirus in pdf
documents.
• you can also specify ‘xls’, ‘ppt’, ‘doc’ for other
formats
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link:www.hpa.org.uk
• finds other sites and pages that link to the
hpa.org.uk site.
• this also works for individual pages
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intitle:mrsa
• only finds pages that includes your term in
the page title
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• google’s
‘headlines’
are page
titles
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allintitle:mrsa norovirus
• the allintitle: operator finds more than one
term in the page title
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inanchor:”mark enright”
• the ‘inanchor’: operator searches for your
specified term in the text of a page that is
highlighted as a link.
• results come from ‘backlinks’ - links from
outside that point to the page.
Friday, 19 June 2009 18

• That search
returns Mark
Enright’s
contact page as
the top hit.
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info:www.hpa.org.uk
• this operator returns several useful tools
about the site
• google’s cache
• links to similar sites
• links to the site
• links from the site
• pages that contain the term
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related:www.hpa.org.uk
• finds sites similar to www.hpa.org.uk
Friday, 19 June 2009 21

define:proliferation
• this operator takes you to online
dictionaries and thesauri that include your
term
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-filetype:pdf
-site:.nhs.uk
• you can also use some of the operators
negatively
Friday, 19 June 2009 23

Google Groups
author:al author:smith
• used in google groups, the ‘author:’ operator
can be used to find posts by specific people
Friday, 19 June 2009 24

• posts written
by ‘al smith’
• add another
term to be
specific
Friday, 19 June 2009 25

author:@doh.gov.uk
• you can also use the ‘author:’ operator to
look for posts from specific organisations
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• 36 threads in google groups that
include people who use their
Department of Health e-mail
addresses
• !!
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Here I searched for
authors using their
employers email
address -
‘@pfizer.com’
Around 1000 threads
include posts from
people using their pfizer
addresses.
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group:uk.legal
• searches for posts only within the group
uk.legal
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insubject:mrsa
• Again, in google groups, this searches only
for posts with MRSA in the subject line
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Google News
location:uk mrsa
• In google news - this finds articles on MRSA
from only UK publications
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location:usa “london
olympics”
In google news -
this finds key
articles in the
major US press
on topic.
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source:guardian mrsa
• In google news - this finds articles on MRSA
from the Guardian Newspaper
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Combine operators for
powerful search
Looking for case studies from official sources of swine flu
outbreaks in UK schools:
site:.gov.uk “swine flu * schools” ~outbreak
Here, the asterisk acts as a wildcard for words between
‘swine flu’ and ‘schools’
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Cases
identifed in
first page of
results...
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Experiment and practise.
Look at this search string:
site:.gov.uk “strictly confidential” filetype:doc
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• interesting
results
• some may, or
may not be,
‘confidential’
• you can focus
results further
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You can be creative with search terms
in your area of interest
For example:
site:.gov.uk “strictly confidential” filetype:doc
staffing ~reductions
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• focused leads
• worth exploring
further
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The right search term is out there..
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