Searching as a Phrase
One method in which you can narrow down your search is to use quotes around the snippet of text you're looking for. For example, if you were searching for information about the book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, it would be better to type it in the search box like this:
"The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands"
This query on google will only return results with all the above words contained on a page, as a phrase. You won't get results that are only about husbands or only about proper care.
Using quotes around a phrase also forces google to include small words that it normally ignores, such as the, a, and, to, so... You can also force google to search for "the" by putting a plus sign in front of it:
You may wish to prune results in a search. Let's say you are searching for websites on Harry Potter. But you don't want websites about the movie. You can exclude keywords by typing a minus sign in front of them. The best way to do this would be the following:
"Harry Potter" -movies -film
So this way we search for the phrase "Harry Potter" without getting sites about the film versions.
The "I'm Feeling Lucky" Button
You may have wondered what this button does. It's a wonderful shortcut. It works best to quickly get to a website of an organisation that you know the name of, but don't know the URL. When you type in a search term and click on this button it automatically takes you to the first link in its results. Try going to www.google.com and typing:
And then click on "I'm feeling lucky" and see what happens. Compare with just clicking the "Search Now" button.
Limiting your Search to a Single Website
Some websites are hopeless and you can never find anything that you want on them. Google can fix this. If you want to search for details concerning the exam paper 2656 on the OCR (http://www.ocr.org.uk) website, you use the site: function of google.
exam paper 2656 site:ocr.org.uk
Dictionary and Definitions
Google is also a fast, powerful and useful dictionary and glossary. Use the define: function and it returns a list of definitions that appear online.
Calculations and Convertions
Google can also be used as a calculator, but also can convert from one unit to another! Try typing these into google:
1999 in roman numerals
100 miles in km
10 choose 3
4323 in binary
Google regularly keeps track of headlines. Go to http://news.google.com for a detailed news summary. There are various categories to choose from. Google automatically sorts stories by topic so you can easily access the same story covered on different sites to get a balanced perspective.
Google makes an extra copy of most of the pages it indexes. Which means if you click on a page and it's not there anymore, often you can get google's copy to read the information that you want, look for the cached link.
If google doesn't have the desired page on file, you may find it at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
... Advertise with Us - Business Solutions - Services & Tools - Jobs,
Press, & Help (c)2004 Google - Searching 4,285,199,774 web pages.
www.google.com/ - 3k - Mar 26, 2004 - " Cached " - Similar pages
When scanning a hard copy for relevance, one may use a highlighter pen on the keywords. Google also can do the same thing when you use the cached link. Refer to a node by momomom for more information.
Google can also search the web for images. Click on the Image link at the top of the google homepage. Works best for famous people, landmarks and works of art. Many images are under copyright so be careful if you want to use the images in your own literature. Refer to google image search for some extra tips.
Full details regarding google's features can be found at http://www.google.com/help/features.html
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