Google Search Tips: Using Google’s Lesser Known Functions for Research

With the popularity of Google, odds are you have probably tried using their search engine a time or two.  However, many people are unaware of how to refine their searches using Google’s lesser-known functions. 

• To find information about a specific website, try inputting something like:  “info:drdianehamilton.com” – be sure you type in the parentheses.
• Utilize the asterisk function.  For example:  “Facebook * millennials” will give you results with only those words.  If you just searched by “Facebook” and “millennials” you may have words between the two in your results.
• Google does not recognize short words such as the, a, and, it . . . Nor is it case sensitive. However it does differentiate between singular and plural as i the case of “millennial” or “millennials”.

If you are interested in some other search-related tools offered by Google check out the following sites:

• blogsearch.google.com – search for blogs
• news.google.com – recent news items
• groups.google.com – newsgroup search
• books.google.com – content of books shows up highlighted
• directory.google.com – yellow pages of websites
• scholar.google.com – scholarly publication search