Google Operators How it can help you effectively search the internet?

GoogleOperatorsHow it can help you effectively search the internet?

What is a Google Operator?

• a command that you add to your query to give Google special instructions about how you want it to deal with a specific search term• some are symbols, while others are words. (Most

online databases and Internet search engines support Boolean operators.)

Google Operators and Boolean searching allows you to do effective searches by

cutting out unrelated documents.

Basic Google Operators

•site:•define:•~ tilde

• - minus

Set up your notes like this…

Google Operator

s

site: define

~ -

Your notes will go in the blue boxes…

SITE:

Examples Using site:

SEARCH poverty site:gov• Results are retrieved only from government

websites in the US • Do NOT put a space after the :

Examples Using site:

SEARCH poverty site:gov• The site: portion of the query can come

before or after the other search terms (poverty is the search term here)

OR

Examples Using site:

SEARCH poverty site:gov

• Top-level domains work with or without the period

OR

Practice Using site:• I want to find documents on US government

websites about gamers, people who play video games. What query do you use?

• Possible searches:• gamers site:gov• gamers site:.gov• site:gov gamers• site:.gov gamers

Now, you

try it!

Practice Using site:• I want to find documents on US government

websites about gamers, people who play video games. What query do you use?

• Possible searches:• gamers site:gov• gamers site:.gov• site:gov gamers• site:.gov gamers

Now, you

try it!

Practice Using site:• You love animals, and think you might want

to become a trainer of animals in a zoo one day. You decide to check the Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov) to see the wages for animal trainers. What would your search look like?

Now, you

try it!

Practice Using site:• You love animals, and think you might want to

become a trainer of animals in a zoo one day. You decide to check the Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov) to see the wages for animal trainers. What would your search look like?

• Possible searches:• site:bls.gov wages animal trainers• site:.bls.gov wages animal trainers• wages animal trainers site:bls.gov• wages animal trainers site:.bls.gov

Now, you try it!

DEFINE

Example Using definedefine: Use to identify the meaning of words. Example: define yarn bombing

• NOTE: to define words that do not appear in traditional dictionaries, click on Search Tools in the left panel, then Dictionary

~ (TILDE)

Example Using ~

•adding a tilde (~) before a search term allows Google to look for related terms it may not have searched for originally. •adding a tilde (~) will return related

terms, not synonyms.

- (MINUS SIGN)

Example Using -• - minus sign eliminates irrelevant results• Use the minus sign in front of any term you do

NOT want in the results of the query• Do NOT place a space between the minus sign

and the term

My query will return results with apple but will not return any results with fruit. Therefore, many results will be about Apple and Mac products.

Practice Using – (minus sign)You are researching topics on the western US and are looking up cowboys. Since it is football season, when you simply search for [cowboys] you get many results on the Dallas Cowboys mixed in with results about the men who were cowboys on ranches. What is a query that you can use to narrow your results to focus on the man who tends cattle and not the football team?

Now, you try

it!

Practice Using – (minus sign)You are researching topics on the western US and are looking up cowboys. Since it is football season, when you simply search for [cowboys] you get many results on the Dallas Cowboys mixed in with results about the men who were cowboys on ranches. What is a query that you can use to narrow your results to focus on the man who tends cattle and not the football team?

• Possible searches:• cowboys –dallas –football• cowboys –dallas

Now, you try

it!

Practice Using – (minus sign)

You want pages that talk about the top free apps. When you search for [top free apps] you get a lot of pages about both Android and iPhone apps mixed into the results, but you don’t want iPhone apps; you have an Android. So, you decide to try rewriting the query so that it eliminates the word iPhone from all your results. What would that query look like? Then, can you think of taking this one step further to get even more precise results?

Now, you try

it!

Practice Using – (minus sign)You want pages that talk about the top free apps. When you search for [top free apps] you get a lot of pages about both Android and iPhone apps mixed into the results, but you don’t want iPhone apps; you have an Android. So, you decide to try rewriting the query so that it eliminates the word iPhone from all your results. What would that query look like? Then, can you think of taking this one step further to get even more precise results?

• Possible searches:• top free apps -iphone• top free apps -iphone -apple

Now, you

try it!

Student Handout

Other Helpful

Resources

A Google A Day Challengeshttp://www.google.com/insidesearch/searcheducation/lessons.html

Search Literacy Lesson Planshttps://docs.google.com/a/g.coppellisd.com/document/d/1Z2hEqyq7Sb0HId9XDSwVLjdIhutb9wH2q-Crz6JTK4E/edit

Google Shortcutshttp://goo.gl/ZWddd

From where does the

information in this

presentation come?

Power Searching with Google Quick Referencehttp://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/assets/PowerSearchingQuickReference.pdf

Intermediate 3: Narrowing a search to get the best resultshttps://docs.google.com/a/g.coppellisd.com/document/d/1gfjMT3RCaZyRC30veJhQ1vKfIVp34uR5l351t_G86UE/edit