1. Advanced Web Searching for Educators
Paul Barron
and
All Right Reserved. This presentation may be copied and distributed
for nonprofit educational purposes only. Revised and Sites Checked June 2016

2. Introduction
"Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand."
Develop and run the search query in the search engine.
Evaluate the information.

3. Why Teach Students Advanced Search Syntaxes?
“Advanced syntax users demonstrate search expertise that the majority of user population does not. They are:
more adept at combining query operators to formulate powerful query statements and
return more relevant results
Not only were they more successful in their searching, they were consistently more successful.”
Investigating the Querying and Browsing Behavior of Advanced Search Engine Users research.microsoft.com/~ryenw/papers/WhiteSIGIR2007b.pdf

4. Presentation Objectives
Review search syntaxes to search for:
Terms on a webpage
Boolean operators – AND and OR
Terms in a specific location on a Web document
Title and words the webpage title and address
Webpages from a source
Specific website – k12.va.us
Top Level Domain (TLD) – .edu, .gov, .info and .org 4 4 4

5. Research Topic
Find results on reading literacy programs best practices for middle school boys.
Include results from
Organizations/associations, colleges and universities, and government sites
K-12 school divisions.

6. How the Query is Entered
Note the spacing, that phrases are enclosed within double quotation marks, and the Boolean AND operator is entered in UPPER CASE.

7. Search Query Guidelines Review
If your search term is more than one words enclose the terms within what punctuation?
“double quotation marks”
Why?
Searches for the words as a phrase 7

8. Use of “Double Quotation Marks”
Enclose search terms of two words or more to search for the terms as phrases.
Keyword Search
Phrase Search 8

9. Practice Searches Search Query # of Results
“reading literacy”
“reading literacy” AND “best practices”
“reading literacy” AND “best practices” AND “middle school”
“reading literacy” AND “best practices” AND “middle school” AND boys
Using the Boolean operator AND adds specificity to further describe your topic.

10. Syntax - intitle: Title Search
Returns results with specific words in the title of the search results.

11. Search Results
Note that “reading literacy” is in the title of all search results. Also, note the “list of literature” and the “comprehensive … plan.”

12. The inurl: Search
The inurl: search returns results with terms in the webpage address.
This search is very useful to find resources from k-12 school divisions.
“reading literacy” AND “best practices” AND “middle school”
AND boys AND inurl:k12

13. All the results have k12 in the webpage address.
Search Results
NOTE
All the results have k12 in the webpage address.

14. Practice Searches Search Query
# of Results
intitle:“reading literacy” AND “best practices” AND “middle school”
intitle:“reading literacy” AND “best practices” AND “middle school” AND boys
“reading literacy” AND “best practices” AND inurl:k12
“reading literacy” AND “best practices” AND “middle school” AND boys AND inurl:k12

15. Top Level Domain-Limited Search
intitle:reading AND literacy AND “best practices” AND “middle school” AND boys AND site:org
Top Level Domain-limited Search – Returns results from the top level domain specified in the query; for example, .edu, .gov, and .org. 15

16. .org Limited Search Results
Note that all search results are from the .org top level domain.

17. Top Level Domains (TLDs)
Purpose
.com
Commercial
.edu
Educational
.gov
Government
.mil
Military
.net
Network
.org
Organization
.us
United States
There are more than 1000 top level domains and country-code top level domains. 17 17 17

18. Why limit the query to other TLDs?
For some informational queries, Google “trusts” (favors) the .gov and .edu TLDs and they will be ranked higher in the results.
To return another TLD to the top of the results you must limit the results to only that TLD; for example, site:org

19. Practice Searches Search Query
# of Results
intitle:reading AND literacy AND “best practices” AND “middle school” AND boys AND site:edu
intitle:reading AND literacy AND “best practices” AND “middle school” AND boys AND site:gov
intitle:reading AND literacy AND “best practices” AND “middle school” AND boys AND site:info
intitle:reading AND literacy AND “best practices” AND “middle school” AND boys AND site:org

20. k12.va.us-limited Query
k12.va.us-limited Search - Restricts the results to only Virginia DOE webpages or Virginia school divisions with k12 in their webpage URL. 20 20

21. k12.va.us-limited Search Results
Note that all search results are from a Virginia school division. 21 21

22. Recommendation
Begin searching with a title field search and Boolean expressions and limit the results to a top level domain or a specific website.
intitle: “your topic”
Boolean expressions – AND or OR add specificity to your query
Top Level Domain – Select one concerned about your topic.
Associations or Organizations - .org
Educational Institutions - .edu
U.S. Government - .gov
Specific website - site:k12.va.us 22 22

23. Query Syntax Help Sources
Title
URL
See Syntax at 23 23 23