Basic Internet Search Techniques

Basic Internet Search Techniques

Now it is time to learn more about, or be reminded of, some of the best ways to get exactly what
you're looking for, and quickly.
1. Either/or
Google normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if
you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use the OR operator -- or use the "|"
symbol.(Ex: Information | Technology.) this would search either information or technology or
both words together.
2. Quotes
If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes. [Information "communication technology"]
will only find that exact phrase. This will find pages that contain the word information and the
exact phrase "communication technology ".
3. Not
If you don't want a term or phrase, use the "-" symbol. Suppose you want to search information
about Mars which is one of the planets and you do not want to mix it up with Mars chocolate,
type as follows [Mars-chocolate] will return pages that contain only information regarding the
planet Mars (Note: Put a space before the minus sign but do not put a sign between the minus
sign and the word or phrase you want excluded).
353
4. Similar terms
Use the "~" symbol to return similar terms. [~flower -rose] will get you pages that contain
"flowers" but not "rose".
You can even use this as a mean of include as in this example:
Suppose you directly want to access Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
webpage in the Open University web site. Although you know the URL of the Open University,
you do not know the exact URL. What you can do is, type
www.ou.ac.lk~Mathematics and computer Science
Then see what happens. Yes, you will be directly given the web pages relevant to the Department
of Mathematics and Computer Science. Without wasting time by clicking links to access a
particular page, isn‟t it easy to type the keywords in a website and search for it?
5. Wildcard
Google treats the asterisk (*) as a placeholder for 1 or more words – it can also be referred to as a
single or multiple word wildcard operator, because Google treats the asterisk as a placeholder for
any unknown term(s) for which it tries to find the best match(es).Google “fills in the blanks”
wherever there is an asterisk.
Here is an example:
You need to browse all the Power point presentations regarding the history of the Internet. You
can type,
“Internet History” * .ppt
in the search bar. Now you can see all the links to the Power point presentations related to the
history of the Internet

 

 

Useful links

 https://www.reading.ac.uk 

SlideShare

https://www.umass.edu/it/sites/it/files/2011/05/31/google_techniques.pdf

Google help