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Advanced Techniques

 

Advanced Techniques Evaluate the site no matter what!
Google Advanced
Google Scholar
Google Public Data
Google Fusion Tables

 

To include internet sites in your academic paper, pages should be evaluated using the CRAAP method:

Current?  Is current to the subject. 
References? Supported with citations.
Applicable?  Applies to your research question.
Authority?  Known, expert author.
Purpose?  Written for scholarly purposes, not for profit.

 

Punctuation Searching

Refined Techniques

Search social media

Put @ in front of a word to search social media. For example: @twitter.

Search for a price

Put $ in front of a number. For example: camera $400.

Search hashtags

Put # in front of a word. For example: #throwbackthursday

Exclude words from your search

Put - in front of a word you want to leave out. For example, jaguar speed -car

Search for an exact match

Put a word or phrase inside quotes. For example, "tallest building".

Search for wildcards or unknown words

Put a * in your word or phrase where you want to leave a placeholder. For example, "largest * in the world".

Search within a range of numbers

Put .. between two numbers. For example, camera $50..$100.

Combine searches

Put "OR" between each search query. For example,  marathon OR race.

Search for a specific site

Put "site:" in front of a site or domain. For example, site:youtube.com or site:.gov.

Search for related sites

Put "related:" in front of a web address you already know. For example, related:time.com.

Get details about a site

Put "info:" in front of the site address.

See Google’s cached version of a site

Put "cache:" in front of the site address.

What you need to know:

Google Searching Techniques

What you need to know first:

  1. Google uses ALGORITHIMS to search the web.
  2. There is more to the web  - check out this infographic from CNN Money
  3. Capitalization does not matter.
  4. The space bar is considered the AND operator.
  5. Google uses PageRank as one of the measures to return results.  PageRank is how many times the page has been "hit".

 

Search Properly for important results.  Remember that spaces should not be used in search queries, use an operator instead.

  • Use web friendly words or subject specific words - instead of saying head hurts, use headache.
  • "  "  = search an exact phrase.  Useful for:  Book titles, movie titles, common phrases, wars,
  • -  = exclude a term.  No space between the - sign and the word and Google will ignore sites that  the word is prevalent
  • * =  is a wild card.  Use within the " " feature for a word/words that you are not sure
  • OR = expands your search when some resources may use specific terms.  Example would be women OR females
  • Site specific searches:  site:.   searches for results within certain sites such as edu, gov, etc.

Library Director

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Kelly Eisenbraun
Contact:
Clay Library Office
(336) 945-3151 ex. 379