Better searching with Google

1. Better searching with
Google
2017Information Skills Tutorial

2. The “Filter Bubble”
Google will push certain results at you based on your previous
searches and your location, this is known as personalisation
by Google or more popularly as the Filter Bubble.
Searches for ‘Brexit', 'climate change', and even 'pizza' will
yield different outcomes for different people.
To avoid this, consider clearing your search history or using
your browser’s incognito function (see tinyurl.com/lzqsswm ).
You could also use www.startpage.com/ to anonymise your
search.

3. The basics:
“Throw a load of words into Google – wade
through pages of results for what you really
wanted…”
or…
Think more carefully: use specific terms and
avoid ‘everyday’ language
Put your terms in order of importance: KEY
words first, secondary terms after.

4. Tell Google what you want!
Google will usually search for variants of your
terms, not just the exact words.
To ensure that only the words you type in appear in
the results use verbatim

5. Use punctuation
 Use quotation marks to search for phrases
“You don't take a photograph, you make it”
 use an asterisk * as a substitute for whole words in
search phrases
how to * in business without really trying
 Put – in front of words you don’t want to see
Homer –Simpson

6. Use operators
site: - search specific websites or domains
Ansel-adams site:thephotographersgallery.org.uk/
Helmut-Newton site:.ac.uk
related: - find sites that are similar to a URL you already
know. (e.g. search for sites related to time.com)
related:time.com
filetype: - restrict your search to particular file formats
obesity filetype:pdf
info: - get information about a URL, including the
cached version of the page, similar pages, and pages
that link to the site (useful if you want to check the
authenticity of a site!)
info:http://www.glos.ac.uk

7. Use Advanced Search
Don’t worry if you can’t remember all this,
use the Advanced search form instead.
Select Settings and then Advanced
Search

8. Searching images
www.google.com/imghp
Search by word, phrase, description or
subject
(note: Google searches for images by using any related
text around an image on a page – or by looking for subject
metadata in any img: tags. If you want your images to be
found, then make sure to use metadata!)
Or
Upload an image using the camera icon:

9. Filtering results
Every results list has a filter bar – click each for a
filtered list based on that category:
Under each category, you can refine further by using
the drop down options under the ‘search tools’ link:

10. Advanced searching
http://www.google.com/advanced_search
For all general web searches
http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
For searching images only
http://scholar.google.co.uk/
For searching academic sources

11. Acknowledgements
Written by David Thompson – Subject Librarian
Screenshots © 2015 Google Inc, used with permission.
Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of
Google Inc.