Often, you will have to try a variety of different terms and keywords to find all of the relevant information on a topic. Here are a few steps to figuring out the keywords and phrases that are relevant to your search:
What are you trying to research? Write out a simple sentence that begins with, "I want to..."
Example: I want to learn about caring for my dog.
Circle the words in this sentence that seem most essential for your research. These are your keywords.
Example: I want to learn about caring for dogs.
3. Come up with some synonyms for your keywords. Brainstorm or use an online thesaurus such as www.Thesaurus.com
Example: Caring: care, training, keeping, raising, tending
Dogs: canine, also... Is it a specific breed of dogs? Age? Define those words.
4. Start plugging in combinations of your keywords into the search engine or database. You may have to try multiple combinations before you find the most relevant results.
Example: dog care, raising puppies, pitbull training, keeping dogs
TIP: As you begin your own searching, make notes of any relevant terms that your search results use that you hadn't thought of. Often, the results are a great place to find other relevant phrases and terms for searching.
Boolean operators are elements that you can include in your search in order to pre-filter your results. They can be used in most online databases as well as on Google.
“search term”
Search for an exact phrase or word by putting the whole phrase/word in quotations.
Example: “research tips”
OR
Search for X or Y by separating the two words/phrases with "OR". This will give you results related to X or Y or both.
Examples: library OR database
AND
Search for X and Y by separating the two words/phrases with "AND". This will return results that are related to both X and Y.
Example: library AND database
NOT
Adding NOT will exclude the term or phrase following it.
Example: library NOT database
( )
Anything put in parenthesis will be given priority over the other elements during the search process. This means the search engine will look for all results from the command in parenthesis first, then it will move on to narrowing results down with any other commands.
Example: (library OR database) "online education"
The search engine will find all pages relevant to "library OR database" first. Then, it will narrow those results down to only the ones that mention "online education"
“search term”
Search for an exact phrase or word by putting the whole phrase/word in quotations.
Example: “research tips”
OR
Search for X or Y by separating the two words/phrases with "OR". This will give you results related to X or Y or both.
Examples: library OR database
AND
Search for X and Y by separating the two words/phrases with "AND". This will return results that are related to both X and Y.
Example: library AND database
-
The minus sign will exclude the term or phrase following it.
Example: library ‑database
site:
Limit results to those from a specific website.
Example: site:fivekeys.org
intitle:
Find pages with a certain word/phrase in the title.
Example: intitle:library
allintitle:
Like “intitle,” but will look for multiple words/phrases.
Example: allintitle:library database
intext:
Find pages containing a certain word/phrase in the content.
Example: intext:library
allintext:
Like “intext,” but will look for multiple words/phrases in the page contents.
Example: allintext:library database
@
Put @ in front of a word to search social media.
Example: @twitter
#
Put # in front of a word to search for hashtags
Example: #throwbackthursday