Basic search techniques for Google, Scholar, Books, News & Images

Google search tips

Capitalize search operators/boolean connectors AND, OR
Example: zika AND "birth defects"
To exclude words use a dash or minus sign (-) before a word with multiple
meanings or to exclude a site
Example: jaguar speed -car, pandas-site:wikipedia.org
To search for an exact phrase and make sure that you are only returning
results that have those exact words in the same words in same order but
quotation marks around the phrase
Example: “your phrase in double quotations”
When you’re not certain if you are looking for a compound word or two words
search for both using the OR operator and putting both terms within
parentheses
(“health care” OR healthcare)
wildcard - placeholder for any unknown term (word or number)
"evidence based" ** practice
number range - results contain numbers in the range
1990..1999 AND ("native american" OR "american indian") AND
poverty
terms in the document title
intitle:”human trafficking”

Cited reference searches

Use the Cited by link to to see newer papers that reference the citation.

On your Google Scholar results page, click Cited by to see articles that have
cited your reference.
Entries with [Citation] have been extracted from bibliographies of articles and
may not have complete bibliographic information.
 Limit page results in Google, Books, News & Images

No spaces between the limit and search terms.

define:hipster limits results to pages with definitions

filetype:pdf limits pages with specified file type (pdf, doc, xls, ppt,
AND ebola rtf, dwf, ps, kml, kmz, swf)
site:cdc.gov limits results to pages from the domain
AND ebola
info:cdc.gov results included cached version of page, pages that
link to site, similar pages
link:cdc.gov pages that link to the page
related:cdc.gov pages that are similar
 Find specific information types: books, blogs, news, images

Books

Go to books.google.com to search full text of books--free, borrow, buy.

Blogs

Google search box > yourterms AND blog

Google search box > yourterms > News > Search tools > All news >
Blogs

News & News Archive

Google search box > yourterms > News for current computer generated
headlines
Google search box > yourterms > News > Search tools > Recent >
Custom range for articles from 2003
Google search box > yourterms > News > Search tools > Archives for
articles prior to 2003
Go to news.google.com for top headlines in 11 categories and 70+ regional
editions
Go to news.google.com > down arrow for Advanced news search for
more search options

Images

Google search box > Images > Search tools for size, color type, time,
usage rights
Go to images.google.com > Settings > Advanced search for size, color
type, time, usage rights
Go to images.google.com > Camera icon > Search by image by url or
uploading an image, a good way to check for appropriate use