Top Search Tips

At the end of our internet search workshops, participants are asked to come up with a collective top search tips. These can be search tools, individual web sites or search techniques. This is a compilation of the tips from several workshops over the past year.

1. It isn't your fault! You run your search a second time in Google and you get a completely different set of results, despite having run the same search a mere 20 minutes before. Or you run a site search in Google but the results come from here, there and everywhere. Or your results bear no resemblance whatsoever to your search strategy. Don't worry - it isn't you. Google results are rarely consistent or reproducible from one moment to the next. If you are having serious difficulties getting any sense out of Google, don't struggle. Try another search engine (http://search.yahoo.co.uk), Live (http://www.live.com/), MSE360 (http://www.mse360.com/), Exalead (http://www.exalead.co.uk/)
    
2. Google Tip 1 highlighted some of the problems with Google but it can still deliver the goods a lot of the time, and it is still the first port of call for most of us. Make sure, though, that you are using the advanced search features to the full and that you are using the right part of Google, for example News for current headlines, Images, Blogsearch etc.
    
3. Use the Advanced Search screen. There are lots of goodies to be found on the advanced search screens: options for focusing your search by file format (e.g. xls for data and statistics, ppt for expert presentations, pdf for industry or government reports); site and domain search to limit your search to just one web site or a type of organization (e.g. UK government, US academic); and in Google there is a numeric range search.
    
4. Google Custom Search Engines (Google CSE) at http://www.google.com/coop/cse/. Ideal for building collections of sites that you regularly search, to create a searchable subject list, or to offer your users a more focused search option.
    
5. See what Google does with your search string. a) If you use the default search box and Google comes back with odd results, click on Advanced Search to see what it has done with your search terms. b) If you use the Advanced Search screen and fill in the boxes, see how Google formats the search strategy by looking the search box at the top of the results page. By learning the commands and prefixes you can build more specific searches on the default search page.