How to Build Your Search

You've learned about keywords and key phrases. You've learned how to choose synonyms. Now it's time to talk about putting all those different types of keywords to work in a search!  

PRO TIP 1

Make a list of all your keywords, including key phrases and synonyms.  Keep track of your searches so you don't go around in circles.

PRO TIP 2

Narrow your search with keywords you find as you search. There are many ways to "build" a search, but the easiest technique is to start small and build up.  This is called narrowing a search. Once you start your search with your initial keywords, you  can use the results you find to modify that search and continue building it until you find what you want.

Let's walk through the video example step by step....

My topic is: The most popular young adult novels today have dystopian themes.

Keywords: "young adult"; novels, dystopian, popular

Synonyms: teen, teenage, books, stories, apocalyptic, "in demand", favorites

Are there more you would add? You might think of other good synonyms! Go ahead and open another browser tab. Go to galileo.usg.edu/flo1 and follow along!​

The Search Process

Search #1

Keywords: "Young adult" dystopian

Results: I see a lot of results about dystopian fiction, but not about their popularity.  But that gives me a clue.  Fiction may be a good keyword!

Search #2

Keywords: "young adult" dystopian fiction

Results: Similar results as my first search. but I'm not seeing sources about how popular it is.  Maybe I need to add popular to my search.

Search #3

Keywords: "young adult" dystopian fiction popular

Results: Now my results are mostly about television or film. The word fiction is not specific to books. Referring to my original keyword list, I might want to use novel instead.

Search #4

Keywords: "young adult" dystopian novel popular

Results: I see popular narratives, and more literary criticism, but I don't see results talking about the popularity of the novels.  A-ha! Popularity. Let's change popular to popularity.

Search #5

Keywords: "young adult" dystopian novel popularity

Results: BINGO! I see several articles that specifically address the popularity of dystopian young adult novels!

See how I used my keywords and added them slowly, tweaking them one by one based on my results? That's how you "build" a search. Continue playing around with this.  Try changing "young adult" to teen, or novel to book. Think about the changes and how they modified your results.