#s-lib-banner-img { width: 40%; } Skip to Main Content

Computer Skills

How to do an Internet Search

Most search engines have advanced search features or tips for better searches, allowing you to be more specific with your search and refine your search results.  You can use the following search limits and more:

  • Published date or web page update
  • Search terms appearing only in the web page title, URL, page links
  • Search for phrases ("quotation marks")
  • Eliminate from results those page that include unwanted search terms (NOT or -)
  • Identify some search terms as optional (OR)
  • Reading level
  • Filetype (doc, docx, ppt, pptx, pdf, xls, xlsx, jpg)
  • Domain of site (government - gov, mil; education - edu; organizations - org)
  • Wildcard/truncation (*, to find variations of a root word)

If the search engine does not have a separate advanced search screen, use the search filters that appear on the search results page (Google, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Google Scholar) or view the Help section for search tips (allintitle; site; filetype).

 

 

Using Keywords to do an Internet Search.

 

Which of the following searches will be more effective?

A) Are school vouchers good or bad for public schools?

or

B) "school vouchers" AND "public schools" AND issues

The answer is typically B - keywords and phrases.

In most cases, you do not want to type in a long sentence or sentence fragment.  Taking your search topic and translating it into the most important keywords that describe your topic is the most effective search technique.  The cases in which you would want to use a sentence as your search phrase is when you are gathering background information, you are having trouble effectively searching with keywords, or it is likely authors will use such similarly worded sentences in their articles.

Other tips regarding keywords:

  • Avoid putting too much into one search - pick the best keywords that you expect the author to be using in their discussion and adjust along the way.
  • Common words to describe an issue versus professional and technical terminology can often effect the scholarly nature of your search results.  For instance, "public education reform" versus "improving our schools."

Thanks to our friends at OCC.