Google Links

Tutorial for Constructing Effective Web Queries (AltaVista)

Yahoo! offers a wider variety of getting answers than Google.
Check out Yahoo! Shortcuts .

Unlimited Searching with Yahoo!

Remember TARP?

Terms or NOUNS

Actions or VERBS

Remedies

Parties

Can't think of a word? Try synonym [your word without braces] in the Yahoo! search box above.

Recommend

Think of the question you want answered and state it in a sentence using keywords.Use NOUNS

Combine phrases within quotation marks - A NATURAL PHRASE can get you what you want quickly

Use the most obscure word

Word order matters

WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, HOW

Use MORE words

Repeat a key word such as internet internet

NEVER use pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions or articles in a search query

Think of possible alternate or improper spellings

OTHER SEARCH ENGINES WORTH A SECOND LOOK

YAHOO!

Vivisimo (Clustering Engine) - gives you an overview of the topic

Topix.net - gets you local

BASIC GOOGLE OPERATORS

+ Google ignores common words and characters such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.)

-Sometimes what you're searching for has more than one meaning; "bass" can refer to fishing or music. You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the term you want to avoid. (Be sure to include a space before the minus sign.)

 

Guide to Internet Research
Google Powerpoint Presentation

by Roberta Woods

SET PREFERENCES FIRST

All researchers should set the results to 100 items.

GOOGLE POWER SEARCHING

Parcel tracking IDs, patents and other specialized numbers can be entered into Google's search box for quick access to information about them. For example, typing a FedEx tracking number will return the latest information on your package. Other special search by number types include :

UPS tracking numbers

example search: "1Z9999W99999999999"

FedEx tracking numbers

example search: "999999999999"

USPS tracking numbers example search: "9999 9999 9999 9999 9999 99" Vehicle ID (VIN) numbers example search: "AAAAA999A9AA99999" UPC codes example search: "073333531084" Telephone area codes example search: "650" Patent numbers example search: "patent 5123123"
Remember to put the word "patent" before your patent number. FAA airplane
registration numbers example search: "n199ua"
An airplane's FAA registration number is typically printed on its tail. FCC equipment IDs example search: "fcc B4Z-34009-PIR"
Remember to put the word "fcc" before the equipment ID.Airport Information

To see delays and weather conditions at a particular airport, type the airport's three letter code followed by the word "airport." For example, Boston Logan International Airport updates can be found by searching for "bos airport."

Flight Tracking

To check the status of a U.S. flight, type the name of the airline followed by the flight number. For example, to see the status for American Airlines flight 468 search for "aa 468 ."

In addition to AND, OR (|), ~ (tilde), and quoted strings “ ”, Google offers special syntax for search queries. NOTE: When using a Google syntax, there is no space between the colon and the first search term.

• intitle: Restricts search to web page titles. [Also available in Yahoo!]
  Variation: allintitle: All the words specified make up the title of the web page.
  CAUTION: allintitle: doesn’t work well with other syntax words

  e.g. intitle:pierce law

  allintitle: pierce law

• inurl: Search terms must be contained in the URL. [Also available in Yahoo!]

  e.g. inurl: piercelaw

• intext: Searches only body text; ignores link text, URLs & titles. Variation:
  allintext: All the search terms are in the text of the web page.
  CAUTION: allintext: doesn’t work well with other syntax words

  e.g. intext: pierce law

  allintext: pierce law school
  Actually this is quite interesting in that it turns up pages where Pierce Law Center is mentioned on a page.

• inanchor: Searches for text in a page’s link anchors, which is the descriptive text of a link. HTML code beginning with <a href=”url here”>This is where the link anchor text is found.>

  e.g. inanchor: cavicchi

  inanchor: "john hutson"
  This produces an interesting list. The sixth choice down, when I conducted this search, was our very own Dean Hutson’s remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1999.

• site: Allows you to narrow the search by either a site or top-level domain. The search engine Alta-Vista offers two syntaxes for this function; one is host: and the other, domain:) This effectively gives you a search engine for sites that don’t have one, but its use can be much broader. [Also available in Yahoo!]

  e.g. site: loc.gov cybercrime
  Search all of the loc.gov URLs for cybercrime.

  site: edu "computer policy"
  Search all edu sites for the search string “computer policy”

• link: Returns a list of pages that link to the URL specified. Also works with deep links. [Also available in Yahoo!]

  e.g. link: www.piercelaw.edu

  link: www.piercelaw.edu/Lawreview

• cache: Locates the copy of the web page that Google stored when it indexed the page so even if the site doesn’t have the page available, you can see a snapshot of it when it was located by Google spiders.

  e.g. cache: www.piercelaw.edu/Lawreview/

•  daterange: Limits your search results to a specific date or date range that the page was indexed by Google. Works with Julian not Gregorian dates. We typically use Gregorian dates in our everyday life. URL for a converter: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.html

  e.g. cybercrime daterange:2452870-2453236
  Cybercrime between 18 Aug. 2003-2004

•  filetype: Searches filename extensions. Following is a list of filetypes indexed by Google:
• Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)
• Adobe PostScript (ps)
• Flash (swf)
• Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku)
• Lotus WordPro (lwp)
• MacWrite (mw)
• Microsoft Excel (xls)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
• Microsoft Word (doc)
• Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
• Microsoft Write (wri)
• Rich Text Format (rtf)
• Text (ans, txt)

e.g. cybercrime filetype:ppt
PowerPoint files on cybercrime

cybercrime filetype:xls
Excel spreadsheets on cybercrime

• related: Finds pages with related content. It’s a good way to find categories of web sites.

  e.g. related: google.com Returns a list of search engines.

• info: Provides a brief page of links to the URL’s cache copy, links to it, similar pages, or contain the term.

  e.g. info: www.piercelaw.edu

• phonebook: Looks up phone numbers.

  e.g. phonebook: Pierce Law Concord, NH

phonebook: john hutson nh

TIPS

Set Preferences to display 100 results per page and to open a new browser with search results.

FIND DATABASES – INVISIBLE WEB

• Figure out who or what agency is required to collect the data and search for their web site (Sometimes I check the statute to be sure.)
• If you cannot find a database, limit your search to site:URLofAgency with the search terms “search database.”

NEWS ALERTS

You can have Google scour the news for you daily to find news articles on your topic or topics of interest. http://www.google.com/newsalerts

ADVANCED NEWS SEARCH

http://news.google.com/advanced_news_search

GOOGLE SERVICES & TOOLS

http://news.google.com/options/index.html

GOOGLE LABS

New from Google Labs: Search by location

http://labs.google.com/

GOOGLE SPECIAL SEARCHES

Google Uncle Sam, Linux, Apple, Microsoft, Universities http://news.google.com/options/specialsearches.html

GOOGLE FEATURES

http://news.google.com/help/features.html

GOOGLE WIRELESS

http://www.google.com/options/wireless.html

 

• ~ You may want to search not only for a particular keyword, but also for its synonyms. Indicate a search for both by placing the tilde sign ("~") immediately in front of the keyword.

• " "Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") will appear together in all results exactly as you have entered them. Phrase searches are especially useful when searching for famous sayings or proper names.

GOOGLE BASICS

• Defaults to AND between words
• nOT cASE sENsITivE
• Will search for synonyms (~)
• Uses “quoted strings”
• Recognizes OR between words
• No more than 10 words to a query ( YAHOO! does take more than 10 words)
• Does NOT use stemming (wildcards) except * can be used as a full word wildcard
• Indexes entire web pages instead of just titles and descriptions
• Search bar is also a calculator