Welcome to Digital Trends at the Library. Over the next few weeks we are hoping to introduce some of the many new things happening online and show how they relate to our role in the library. Your feedback and suggestions will help this program to focus on the things that will be relevant to your needs.
This session there’s an overview of some of the most useful Google search tricks, from basic tips to new features just recently released.
Try each of these search tricks out using the examples given or create your own examples of these searches.
Symbol
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How to use it
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"
| When you put a word or phrase in quotes, the results will only include pages with the same words in the same order as the ones inside the quotes. Only use this if you're looking for an exact word or phrase, otherwise you'll exclude many helpful results by mistake. Great for books , songs or movies. Example: "imagine all the people" |
-
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When you use a dash before a word or site, it excludes sites with that info from your results. This is useful for words with multiple meanings, like Jaguar the car brand and jaguar the animal.
Examples: jaguar speed -car |
*
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Add an asterisk as a placeholder for any unknown or wildcard terms. This works best inside quotes.
Example: "a * saved is a * earned" |
..
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Separate numbers by two periods (full stops) without spaces to see results that contain numbers in a range.
Example: camera $50..$100 |
$
|
Find prices
Example: nikon $400 |
@
|
Find social tags
Example: @agoogler |
#
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Find popular hashtags for trending topics
Example: #throwbackthursday |
vs.
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Compare foods using vs. Type in “lamb vs. beef” or "wheat vs. corn" for example, and you’ll receive side-by-side comparisons of the nutritional facts
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Operator
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How to use it
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site:
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Get results from certain sites or domains.
Examples: olympics site:nbc.com and olympics site:.gov |
define:
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Find the dictionary meaning or web description of something.
Example: define:kakorrhaphiophobia |
related:
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Find sites that are similar to a web address you already know.
Example: related:time.com |
OR
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Find pages that might use one of several words.
Example: marathon OR race |
info:
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Get information about a web address, including the cached version of
the page, similar pages, and pages that link to the site.
Example: info:google.com |
