Google search techniques and commands. Presented by Richard Le

1. Google Search
for students, educators & businesses
Richard Le
Reference Librarian

2. Welcome & intro
Goals
•Tricks and commands
•Search operators
•Limiting options
•Filter results
•Scholar, news & image

4. Information Professionals

5. Web vs. Databases

7. Calculator
Google’s built-in calculator function
4+5=

8. Define
Finds a definition for a word or phrase
Define love

9. Movies
Finds reviews & showtimes playing nearby
Movies 94102

10. Medications
Finds info about most prescription drug in U.S.
Lipitor

11. Flight tracking
Finds flight schedules to or from a destination
• Wow Air 162
• Flights from SFO to Chicago

12. Currency conversion
Converts world currency
200 USD in Mexican Peso
200 USD in Euro

13. Local search
Finds for a store, restaurant, or other local business
Chinese food 94103

14. Music album
Finds music albums by artist
Michael Jackson album

15. Stock quote
Finds current market data for a given company or
fund
BBY (Best Buy)

16. Unit conversion
Converts between different units of measurement
128 inches in meter

17. Weather info
Finds weather for many U.S. and worldwide cities
Weather San Francisco

18. Population info
Finds population info for U.S. and worldwide cities
Population Mexico City

19. Time
Finds the time in many cities around the world
Time New York City

20. Sunrise and sunset
Finds the sunrise and sunset time in many cities
around the world
Sunrise Denver, CO
Sunset Hong Kong

21. Who is …
Finds info about a well known person
Who is Donald Trump

22. When is …
Finds the date of a holiday or event
When is Easter 2023

23. Search
Operators

24. Boolean operators
Source: http://www.sdcc.edu/uploadedImages/SDCCedu/Academics/Library/Search_Guides/LibGuides/Boolean.png

25. AND
Searches for pages that may contain both of the
terms
Richard Le AND Library

26. OR
Searches for pages that may contain either of the
terms
U.S. Tennis Open 2010 OR 2012

27. NOT
Searches for results that do not contain the term
Catherine NOT Cathy

28. “ ” Quotation
Searches for an exact word or phrase
“Northern California Translators
Association”

29. - Minus sign
Excludes all results that contain that word
Chinese recipes -cookbook

30. * Asterisk
A placeholder for any unknown phrase or terms
who is “* Lee”

31. Limiting options
• Built-in commands
• Limit search results
• Quick and powerful

32. Link
Finds pages that link to a certain page
Link:sfpl.org

33. Related
Finds related pages by topic
Related:nytimes.com

34. Info
Get information about a URL
Info:sfpl.org

35. Site
Finds results only from certain site or domain
Site:edu

36. Filetype
Finds a specific type of file
Filetype:pdf

37. Intitle
Finds terms in the title of the webpage
Intitle:scholarships

38. Inurl
Finds terms in the webpage URL
Inurl:scholarships

39. Location
Finds results from the location you specify
Tennis courts location:San
Francisco

40. Source
Finds news articles from a specified source
Donald Trump Source:nytimes

41. Date
Finds pages within a specific date.
Date:2 (within 2 months)
Donal Trump Source:nytimes Date:2

42. Around
Find pages that include words or phrases which are
near to each other.
“Richard Le" AROUND(3)
"Class of 1994"

43. Safesearch
Restrict a search to exclude adult-content
Safesearch:hardcore

44. Country code
Finds results within a foreign country domain.
Add the code to URL.
&restrict=countryAU (for Australia)

45. Trick # 1
Limit results from a specific region
Taco recipes site:mx (Mexico)

46. Trick # 2
Find sample forms using Google Images
Resume translator
Rental lease agreement

47. Trick # 3
Limit results to 2 site domains
"university of california" "business
major" scholarships
(site:edu | site:gov)

48. Trick # 4
Use context terms to describe the info and
situation
Facts, data, report, studies, review,
statistics, “how-to”, Diagram, help, FAQ

49. Trick # 5
Use Google’s related search suggestions

50. Trick # 6
Make use of the website structure
[ Site, Inurl and terms ]
Cal baseball hosts Texas
site:berkeley.edu inurl:calendar

51. Trick # 7
Create Google alerts to get email
notification when terms appear
Google Search FAQ
New iPad sales

52. Trick # 8
Search for world views by country domains
Google France
Site:fr

53. Trick # 9
Use Google Ngram viewer to analyze word
use (trends) in books in different times in
history.
Google Ngram viewer

54. Trick # 10
Use a reverse dictionary to find a specific
term for an idea
Reverse dictionary

55. Trick # 11
Find Creative Commons content (images)
to reuse commercially
Creative Commons option

56. Trick # 12
Combine search operators using (OR and - )
Site: filetype: intitle: inurl: intext:
Date: allintitle: source: “terms”
AROUND(2)

57. Google

58. Google News
Finds current events and news
• Personalize your news (slider)
• Filter news by category, world & nearby
• Conduct archival research
http://news.google.com

61. Google Books
Finds current events and news
• Personalize your news (slider)
• Filter news by category, world & nearby
• Conduct archival research
http://news.google.com/newspapers
“San Francisco earthquake” 1989
Site:news.google.com/newspapers

62. Search options
TEXT TEXT TEXT
Result filters
Related searches
Time
Reading level
Nearby
Verbatim
Limiting options
Site
Filetype
Intitle
Inurl
Intext
Link
Related
Source
Location (region)
Date
Language
Safesearch
Search operators
Word order
Keywords
OR, AND & NOT
~ * + - “ ”

63. Research Help
Contact
author
Doc delivery
services
Ask a
librarian Academic
libraries
Public library
databases
Google search

64. SFPL Databases &
Business applications

65. Take Away
Free access
Search databases
General subjects
Request articles
Student access*
More databases
multi-disciplinary
Allows walk-in
Request articles*
Library vs. the Web
DatabaseDatabase InternetInternet
Not reliable
Info overload
Required search
skills
Not efficient
Authoritative
Easy to search
Fast & efficient
Guided search
Free