Workshops

Google Tips Presenter Notes

Introduction

Google Calculator

You can use Google as an inline calculator or to convert units of measurement. For example:

25-6
25-6/3
(25-6)/3
10000 meters in miles
500 euros in dollars

Special Search Syntax

site: to see all the pages at a site
link: to see who links to a page
related: for sites related to a topic
phonebook: is only residential, not business
define: works for acronyms as well as words

Examples

site:polisci.boisestate.edu
link:polisci.boisestate.edu
related:polisci.boisestate.edu
phonebook:skip knox boise idaho
define:ecru

Advanced Search

The Advanced Search link offers some very powerful and useful tools. I use this regularly.

Find Results

Use this if you don't want to bother with remembering the syntax for operators, but there are also some things here that are hard to do on the command line.

all = using AND between each word or phrase
exact phrase = using quote marks to define a phrase
at least one = using OR between each word or phrase (this is the default anyway)
without = using the negation operator
and because you have four fields here, you can use these in combination

Language

This is useful if you are searching on a topic that returns lots of foreign language hits but you cannot read that language. I recommend this to my students sometimes.

Date

This is extremely useful when dealing with current or recent events. For example, when I want to look for information on XHTML, I do not want to read stuff from 1999 or even 2003.

Domain

I use this very often when doing academic research in order to limit hits to .edu sites. You can also use it to limit the search to a specific site, such as another university.

Rarely Used

Numeric Range, File Format, Occurrences, Usage Rights, SafeSearch

Topic-Specific Searches

Here Google pre-selects some target databases. Sometimes useful.

Operators

Number Ranges

aaa..bbb

This can be useful if you are searching prices, or if you are searching specs. Example:
camera 4..6 megapixel
I use it for searching centuries. Example:
11th..14th primary source

Wildcards

Google doesn't let you do substring searches. It does do automatic stemming, so if you search on "propose" Google will count "proposal" and "proposition" as matches. This takes care of number and tense. It will even get synonyms, so that "dog" is a match for "canine".

Google does support whole word wildcards, which can very occasionally be useful, mainly if you are searching on a phrase. For example, you could search on "now is the * for all good men to come to the aid of their country" -- in case you didn't remember if the word was "hour" or "time."

Phrases

To get an exact phrase, enclose it in double quotes

Negation

To exclude a word or phrase, put a minus sign in front of it

Synonym

To search including synonyms of your word, use the tilde. Example: green ~ape will find not only green ape but green monkey.

Google Directory

A directory of links, like what Yahoo and other sites have. It's very useful when you want to browse a very large topic, such as "Internet"

Other Google Tricks

Set the Interface Language to Klingon … or to Elmer Fudd or Pig Latin or Swedish Chef. Be very careful when you do this because the whole interface changes and you had better be able to read enough to find your way back!
Translate text on the Language Tools page
To find pictures, enter your search string. On the results, click Images. Do the same for Video, News, and Maps. Sometimes you find the most surprising things!
For the weather, type weather town or state
You can do the same for time: time city
Check flight information: airline flight number


  Track your shipping by entering the FedEx or UPS tracking number
  Search for book reviews with review book title. Scope the search to higher ed reviews by adding site:.edu to the end.



Other Google Services
Google offers a ton of other stuff that isn't directly searching. Here are most of them.

Google Maps
Google Books
Google Earth
Google Scholar
iGoogle
Google Calendar
Gmail
Google Docs
Google Labs

Home for all the beta test stuff. It's mostly very stable and worth investigating if it seems worthwhile.
Other Other
Another way to see the range of what Google offers is to go to google.com/support and specifically the Google A to Z link.

About Yahoo!
Yahoo! does some things better, some things worse. Their help files aren't as good, imo. The Advanced features seem to be comparable.
Better
link: Same syntax, but on the results you can tell it to show all pages that are linked to *anywhere* in your site. Example: link:crusades.boisestate.edu shows about a thousand links, but the Entire Site option returns over 3,000.
site: Results vary. For example, Google says I have 502 pages at my Crusades site, but Yahoo says there are 727.
If you are doing a serious search you should always check multiple sites. YMMV
Worse
You can use parentheses in calculations, but Yahoo doesn't show you how it is grouping if you fail to nest properly.
The currency conversion doesn't warn you that it's fluctuating.
Doesn't do define or related
The docs claim the hyphen is the negation operator but it didn't work for me. NOT did, however. "dogs NOT poodle"

OIT Web Center