How to Search – Tricks of the Googling Trade

​No matter which search engine you use, learning how to search is crucial. Finding information on search engines can sometimes be frustrating but you can usually cut down on that frustration with a few tricks:

• Basics: instead of typing “where’s the closest airport” try simply typing “closest airport and 55555 [your zip code]”
• Don’t sweat the spelling or capitalization: Google sees “New York” as the same as “new york”
• Start the search with the topic then a subtopic:
  • Weather: Search a city name or a zip code, e.g., weather seattle or rain 20101,
  • Dictionary: Type define in front of any word for its definition or pronounce for how to say it.
  • Calculations: Enter a math equation like 3*9123.
  • Unit conversions: Type 3 dollars in euros or 35 mm in inches
  • Sports: Type manchester united december 26 or super bowl 51 to get sports scores, schedules, etc. 
  • Quick facts: Search for the name of a celebrity, location, movie, or song to find related information. 
  • Add the word “hoax” to your search to see if there were bogus posts and articles about the subject
• Use operators to limit your search results:

​+
Use a plus sign to connect two items or descriptors: e.g. heart + disease. Retrieves sites that have those words, but may not be directly adjacent to each other.

OR
Find pages that might use one of several words, e.g.  marathon OR race retrieves all sites about any kind of race or any kind of marathon.

-
Use the minus sign to exclude sites with that info, e.g. jaguar speed -car retrieves info about the speed of the animal, not the car.

“ ”
Enclose your search in quotation marks to limit your results to only those sites that have an exact phrase: e.g. “heart disease” This will get sites about heart disease without sites about Valentine’s Day.

*
Add an asterisk as a placeholder for any unknown or wildcard terms, e.g. "a * saved is a * earned"

..
Separate numbers by two periods without spaces to see results that contain numbers in a range, e.g. camera $50..$100 lists cameras priced between $50 and $100

site
Gets results from certain sites or domains, e.g. olympics site:nbc.com and olympics site:.gov. This is especially useful if you want a particular site but don’t know its exact URL (web address).

related
Find sites that are similar to a web address you already know.[1]


[1] “How to Search On Google,” Google Search Help, 2016, accessed January 19, 2016, https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/134479?hl=en
  

​Now about those search results....At the top of your search results list will be the sites that have paid for listing at the top of the returned list.
Paid AdWords are an effective way for businesses to get their website listed first in “hits” returned. For example, while it costs nothing to simply list a website on Google, to get the site listed at the top of the “hit” list varies. According to the GetFoundFirst blog, “The cost to show up on the number one spot varies… some of the main determining factors (include):

• Each keyword, and changes on each keyword multiple times per day.
• Total advertisers bidding to rank on that same keyword.
• The price of each bid of each advertiser on that keyword.
• The business’s click through rate compared to other advertisers.
• The business’s ad quality score compared to other advertisers.”

So, the article that appears at the top of the list when you do a Google search may not really be relevant to your subject. It may be an ad  trying to sell you something. Google clearly shows the word “Ad” at the front of the listing, but many people ignore that. Don’t ignore it. It may be biased. You don’t want that.

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Want more? Buy the book: Scam-Proof: Good Information & Critical Thinking for an Evidence-Based Life.  
Amazon: $1.99 Kindle, $6.25 paperback

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