Advanced Google Becoming a Power Googler

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 How Google Works PageRank: The number of pages link to any given page. “Importance” of the linking page matters too “Sophisticated text-matching techniques”: Match not only number of times term(s) appear in page but also “all aspects of the page’s content”

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Essentials of Google Search I Choosing search terms: choose search terms wisely -- more terms (up to 10) producer narrower results; order will affect search results Automatic “and” queries: all terms are searched Exclusion of common words: in order to include words such as “the” being searched place a “+” sign in front of it Stemming: Google searches on variations of the word, e.g. diet, dieting, dietary

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Essentials of Google Search II Phrase searches: place phrases between quotation marks Negative terms: since many words in English have more that one meaning, e.g. bat the animal, bat the baseball equipment, placing a negative sign in front of a term (– baseball) will help narrow your search for the animal I’m Feeling Lucky: takes you to “the most relevant website … found for your query”

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Search Results Page I

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Search Results Page II “SMCU” search Top links Google search button Advanced search Search field Preferences Statistics bar Tip OneBox results Page title Text below the title URL of result Size Cached Similar pages Indented results More results

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Setting Preferences Search preferences SafeSearch filtering: can be done in general or by search Language options: generally set to English but great to change for ESL and language classes; interface language (fun) and search language may be set separately(fun) Number of results: generally set to 10 for speed but can be set for up to 100 New results window: if you want another window to come up with results change this

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Google Advanced Search

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Advanced Search Tips I I try and use advanced search for all searching and encourage my kids to do so also Some advantages: You can do exactly the same search you do on “naked” Google – just use the top search box since “all of the words” is what Google generally searches for You can do a whole lot more!

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Advanced Search Tips II With AS you can search only for pages: by exact phrase (without using quotes) with at least one of the words entered (same as using the “OR” operator That don’t contain certain words (same as the “-” operator

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Advanced Search Tips III You can also search only for pages: Written in a certain language Created in a certain file format That have been updated within a certain period of time That contain certain numbers within their range Within a certain domain or website That don’t contain “adult” material

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Google Cheat Sheet All of the previous “advanced” operations and a lot more can be done from Google.com if you know and use the Google Cheat Sheet For example: “+” before a word will find the word even if its automatically excluded “~” before a word will find synonyms Two numbers separated by two periods will find results within a given range

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 More Googles I Above the general search box in Google are “top links”: Web – Images – Groups – News – Froogle – Local – more >> Clicking on one of these will take you a specific Google page where you can search for pictures, groups of users, news stories, consumer goods, and local businesses It can really get interesting if you click on “more >>”!

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 More Google II Lets look at a few of the Google Services Directory Maps Print Scholar University Search Web Search Features And a few of the Google Tools Blogger GoogleEarth Translate

(c) Thomas T. Kaun 2005 Any Questions? I hope you found this presentation helpful You can find all of these materials online at Google.com