UDLib/SEARCH
A state-funded collaboration between the Delaware Department of Education and the University of Delaware Library providing online magazines, journals, encyclopedias and training for all Delaware K-12 public schools
A state-funded collaboration between the Delaware Department of Education and the University of Delaware Library providing online magazines, journals, encyclopedias and training for all Delaware K-12 public schools
Have a question? Ask Google!
Searching on Google is a common task that many kids and adults do every day. While most people know they can type a question into the search bar to get the answer they are looking for, many people are unaware that they could have more control over their search results.
When you have performed a search in Google, have you ever received thousands or millions of results? That is more results than anyone could review quickly! Google frequently retrieves a lot of results, but it has also trained its search engine to float the most popular and relevant results to the top of the list. Unfortunately, their idea of "relevant" may differ from your own. If you want to become an expert searcher, Google provides advanced search options that give you more control over the results you receive. Review the tips and videos below to learn how to retrieve more relevant (and probably fewer!) results.
When you're ready, feel free to conduct a Google search on your own using the new advanced skills you learn here.
To help narrow down that long list of results you may have discovered when conducting a Google search, you will need to use some advanced searching techniques. The 5 tips listed below help you hone in on the results that better align with what you need and will eliminate some of the unrelated or irrelevant content. More information about these tips and access to a high-level video can be found on commonsense.org.
When you conduct a search in Google (or most databases), the system will search for all of your keywords without paying attention to the order of your keywords. If you want to search an exact phrase, put the phrase in quotation marks. This technique will remove all of the results from your list that do not contain that exact phrase. For example, if you want to identify the author of a specific quote, you can type that quote in Google surrounded by quotation marks, and discover the author in the first results:
This search will lead you to discover that this phrase is a famous Dalai Lama quote.
Many things you search for have multiple synonyms or other ways to say the same thing. In order to get a results list that searches for all of the synonyms you have identified, combine those terms or phrases with "OR", and you will increase your number of results. You will receive results not only for your initial keyword or key phrase, you will also pull in results with your specified synonyms. Don't forget to include quotation marks in your search when needed!
If you find that you are getting too many results and results that includes words that you do not want to see in your results list, try using a "-" (hyphen or minus symbol) in front of the word or phrase you would like to eliminate from your results. This is a great tool to use when you are trying to narrow down your results to ones that are most relevant.
If you want to narrow down your results to only include information from a particular website, you can type "site:" (make sure to include the colon!) and enter the website. You can add your additional search terms after the website address.
If you are interested in only pulling together results that are from a specific country, you can add the country code to your "site:" search. If you need the code for a specific country, you can find a list here. For example, you can search for "site:IT pizza" to find search results about pizza that are from Italy.
Google Advanced Search: https://www.google.com/advanced_search
Advanced Google Search can help you narrow down your results quickly without having to sort through thousands of links. The Advanced Google Search page looks very similar to the Advanced Search pages in many library databases. The page might look overwhelming at first, but these different search bars can help you get to the most relevant results on your topic. Google Advanced Search provides the same advanced options available in Google Basic Search and breaks them into easy-to-use search boxes. The far right of the search boxes gives you information about how to use each search box to your benefit.
Helpful Tips for Using Advanced Search: