Advanced Web Searches

Google Scholar

This website is a great way to search credible sources beyond the databases. Be sure to use these tricks + tips.

• Google Scholar searches are not case sensitive. That means a search for "Machine Learning" will produce the same results as a search for "machine learning".

• Use keywords instead of full sentences. Use key topics/terms from your research project. Google Scholar will assist you on that: if you start typing in the search field you will see related queries suggested by Scholar!

• Use quotes to search for an exact match. This means that if you search national parks, the words will not necessarily appear together. Grouped words and exact phrases should be enclosed in quotation marks, so try "national parks" instead.

• Add the year to the search phrase to get articles published in a particular year. A search using e.g. self-driving cars 2015, will return articles or books published in 2015.

• Use the side bar controls to adjust your search result. Using the options in the left hand panel you can further restrict the search results by limiting the years covered by the search, the inclusion or exclude of patents, and you can sort the results by relevance or by date.

Google Search Tips & Tricks

If you are using Google as your search engine, there are shortcuts in the URL box that you can use rather than using an advanced Google search. Avoid putting spaces between the symbol or word and your search term (Google search usually ignores punctuation that isn't part of the search operator).

• A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com won't.

Exclude words from your search

• Put "-" in front of a word you want to leave out. For example: australia -travel

Combine terms

• Put "-" between each search query (no space). For example: civil-war

Search for an exact match

• Put a word or phrase inside quotes. For example: "tallest building"

Search within a range of numbers

• Put ".." between two numbers. For example: american presidents 1876..1900

Combine searches

• Put "OR" between each search query. For example: marathon OR race

Search within a specific site

• Put "site:" in front of a site or domain. For example: site:loc.gov civil-war or site:.gov education

Search for related sites

• Put "related:" in front of a web address you already know. For example: related:loc.gov

Using similar search terms

• Put "~" in front of a search term to find similar words. For example, this will also find costume facts: ~clothing facts

Search for unknown words

• Put "*:" in the space of an unknown word. For example: a * is a * earned

Find specific file types

• Put "filetype:" followed by the type of file you are searching for. For example: filetype.pptx cell-structure

Search for a word(s) within a webpage

• Use "CTRL-F:"

Searching using hashtags

• Put "#" in front of a word. For example: #2020 election