1. Better Internet Searches
Using
Mary F. English Program
Northern Illinois University

2. Search like an expert!
• The following tips in this presentation will help
you make better searches using the Google
search engine.
– Many of these tips may also work with Bing or
Yahoo, but each definitely works with Google.

3. How to setup your Windows 7
split screen for this lesson

4. Explicit Phrase
• Put your search inside quotation marks “ ” to
search for that exact phrase.
– For example, if you search for northern Illinois
university “college of education” then the words
northern, Illinois, and university will be
independently searched for on the page, and the
entire phrase college of education will be searched
for on the page.

5. Exclude Words
• Put a – sign in front of a word in your search
to exclude pages that include that word.
– For example, if you search for chicago white sox
–cubs, then only pages which talk about the
Chicago White Sox, without ever mentioning the
Chicago Cubs, will be displayed.

6. Site Specific Search
• If you want to use a search engine to search
only one specific website, then type in your
search like normal, followed by
site:www.insertnamehere.com.
– For example, if you search jay cutler
site:www.chicagobears.com then only pages that
talk about Jay Cutler on www.chicagobears.com
will be displayed.

7. Similar Words and Synonyms
• Put a ~ sign in front of a word in your search if
you would like to see search results that
include words related the word you put a ~ in
front of.
– For example, if you search top 10 ~videos of all
time, you would see search results that include
the top 10 movies of all time and the top 10 films
of all time.

8. Specific Document Types
• If instead of webpages you want to only
search for specific file types, you can type the
search as usual followed by filetype:extension
– For example, if you want to search for basic
algebra PowerPoint presentations, you would
search basic algebra filetype:ppt.
• Notice you need to type in the files extension, and not
the name of the program you are using (try to search
basic algebra filetype:powerpoint to see for yourself
that the extension is needed)

9. This OR That
• If there you want to search for something that
is often called by two different terms, you can
use OR between both words to have Google
search for both.
– For example, if you want to search for batman
comic books, which are sometimes referred to as
graphic novels, you could search batman “comic
books” OR “graphic novels”.

10. Phone Listing
• Did you receive a call or text message from a
phone number you don’t recognize? Google
makes it easy to look up a phone number by
typing phonebook:555-555-5555.

11. Numeric Ranges
• Do you want to find search results that relate
only to a specific series of years? To do this,
just type the first year, followed by …, and
then the last year.
– For example, if you want to learn about the United
States Vice President from 1960-1970, you would
type in united states vice president 1960…1970.

12. Google Calculator
• Did you know Google offers a built-in
calculator? Just type in the equation you want
solved, and Google will give you the answer.
– For example, if you wanted to know what 352
times 65.03 is, you would type 352*65.03. If you
wanted to know what 530 divided by 27.3 is, you
would type 530/27.3. You can even do longer
equations like 352*65.03/27.3+2000

13. Word Definitions
• One of the fastest ways to look up the definition
of a word online is to type define followed by
the word you want the definition of.
– For example, define obstreperous.

14. That does it for this presentation!
You will need to complete the
Better Internet Searches Using
Google Quiz on the MFE Moodle to
earn credit for this lesson.
www.collaborate2learn.com

15. Work Cited
• Shah, Darmesh. "12 Quick Tips To Search Google Like An Expert." 12 Quick
Tips To Search Google Like An Expert. HubSpot, 5 Mar. 2007. Web. 28 Nov.
2012. <http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/1264/12-Quick-
Tips-To-Search-Google-Like-An-Expert.aspx>.