Ready Reporter

I just did a session with graduate students on researching on the Net.  Every time I do one of these I ask people’s favorite search engine.  Usually about 85-90% say “Google.”  This time I got 100% for Google. That’s a first.

But when I ask “why” — they really don’t know that it is better.  “It’s convenient.” “I always used it, I guess.”  So since you probably use it as your default, why not learn a little more about it. Then you can be a more effective searcher.

Here is what I got when I searched for “Everson Museum”, which is the art museum in the city where I work. And of course I did it as a phrase search in quotes:

Notice that a map comes up at the right.

Did you know if you mouse over any entry in the list of results that an arrow appears. Click the arrow and  you’ll get a  screen shot of the website, like below. See the circled arrow in red?

That’s a quicker way to peruse the results quickly, especially when you are not sure which is the best of all the results.  And research shows most people only click on the first three!

Above that screen shot, you’ll see the words “cached” and “similar.” Clicking on “cached” gives you the last picture of the website captured by Google. This helps if a site is down or out of service. Or you want to see what used to be there (especially if something has changed or someone has pulled off copy!)  Click on “Similar” and you’ll find websites similar to that one, which can be helpful for further research.

Spend 15 minutes reading this Google Inside Search help guide which explains what you see on the screen of results. Or read the “Tricks and Tips” page.   I bet you’ll learn something that will make you a better searcher.

A student asked me the other day, “how do you write searches because I don’t always get what I want.”   Here are my top three tips to speed your searching and give you more effective answers:

1. Put phrases in quotes.  The search engines all put an “and” in between words so if you type:

Syria massacre

the search engine will return every page with Syria and every page with massacre. But if you type:

“Syria massacre”

then you will only get pages that have those two exact words next to each other. Using phrase searching will return fewer and higher quality returns.

2. Use the minus sign to eliminate words you don’t want. If you do a search and get a lot of bogus hits, eliminate that word but putting a minus sign before it.  For example, if I want to read about the Mirror Awards this year, I would use this search:

“Mirror Awards” -2011 -2010 -2009

It will give me every page that has the two words together Mirror Awards but not any page that has 2011, 2010, 2009 on it, so likely only those that have 2012, or those with earlier dates, but they’ll be lower on the page, likely.

3. When you know you just want to search one site, use the formula for a keyword search at one domain.  The formula is:

keyword site:domain-name

For example, if I wanted to search for the Mirror Awards, given annually by the Newhouse School (my employer) for  the best media writing, then I would put:

  “Mirror Awards” site:newhouse.syr.edu

Note that you don’t put the www in your domain.

Try out these tips and comment on how they work, or leave another search tip.