the confident researcher: deeper down the rabbit hole (module 3) the confident researcher: deeper...

The Confident Researcher: Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole

(Module 3)

The Confident Researcher: Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole 3

Overview

1)Definitions

2)Using Quotation Marks

3)Operators

4)Case Sensitivity

5)+ and –

6)Deeper Searching and Advanced Searching


Definitions: The Key to Your Success


CASE SENSITIVE Case sensitive means that if your keyword(s) are CAPITIALIZED it will change the search results.

FIELDThe space for a particular piece of information. Used as a way of organizing lots of information into categories.

FIELD SEARCHING Looking within different fields like the title, the url, or links.

+REQUIRE or -REJECT A TERM OR PHRASE By using a + sign before a word in your search, it means that the search engine will only look for documents that have that word. If you use a – sign before the word, then the search engine will exclude documents that have that word in them.

OPERATORSOperators are words or symbols that you can use in your searches to tell the search engine HOW to search. For example, AND, BUT, OR, +,-, link:, site:, intitle:, inurl:, etc.

LIMITINGLimiting is a way to make sure you don’t end up with so many results you can’t find anything. Limiting is narrowing your search by increasing specificity.

Using Quotation Marks Effectively in Your Searches


As mentioned in the previous module, if you enclose your search with quotation marks, Google will look for the EXACT phrase in the EXACT order of the words between the marks. For example: Arab students in Doha gives the following results:

Notice the words in bold. A search without quotation marks simply looks for pages with any of the three main words (the word “in” is usually left out in Google simple searches) in any combination that are somewhat near to each other.

However, if we search using quotation marks, our results will differ drastically. Watch.

Unlike the previous search which had 323,000 results, using the quotation marks gives us only one result. That’s because the quotation marks tell Google to search only for that particular phrase with the words in that particular order.

The AND Operator


One of the great things about Google is that AND is already implied between the words. In other words, you don’t have to type it when doing simple searches. However, you do need to remember that word ORDER does make a difference, so if you get stuck, re-arrange your words.

OR


OR is another operator that will help you find pages with EITHER one of the terms you’re searching for.

Don’t get on my case! Why aren’t you more sensitive?


Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the same results.

I can see the + and -


Google, as mentioned before, excludes common words. If, however, you want it to search the common word, you can put the whole phrase in quotation marks or simply put a + before the common word you want included in the search and a – in the words that you don’t want included. For example. If I want to look up every Tom Cruise movie EXCEPT Top Gun, Mission Impossible, and War of the Worlds, I would put a – before EVERY word I don’t want in the results.

Before After

Feeling lucky, punk?


After you've entered your search terms, you might want to try the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, which takes you straight to the most relevant website that Google found for your search. You won't see the search results page at all, but if you did, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" site would be listed on top. In other words, the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is a shortcut to the top result

Combing the Desert: Limiting Fields Within the Search Window


Another way to search is to do a field search. A field search looks for things only in certain parts of the webpage.

First, if you only want to look at the titles of webpages, you can type: intitle: followed by what term you are looking for.

The term Doha is in the title of every one of these results.

Secondly, you can limit your search to a specific site by typing site: followed by the first part of the web address (URL) plus the keywords you’re looking for.

Notice that Google only searched within the QU site for the keywords women students.

Lastly, you can limit your searches to the URL of webpages by typing inurl: followed by the terms you’re looking for.

The term “Doha” appears somewhere in the URL’s of all the results.

Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole, eh?: Advanced searching using the advanced search link

(learn to use this well and you won’t have to remember all the other stuff)


If you want to search deeper without all the typing, simply follow the link Advanced Search.

The advanced search page will do EVERYTHING for you ALL AT ONCE AFTER you understand how to use it.

If you learn to use this page well, you can forget 80% of the information in this presentation.

Congratulations! You have completed Module 3! You may continue to Module 4 with the approval of

your teacher.


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