Today I’m going to talk about that ubiquitous search engine: Google. Let’s face it, most people use it for nearly all their online searching (it is by far the most popular search engine: as in around 86% of all desktop searches in December 2021, and 3.5 billion searches daily). So let’s take a look at some ways to improve your searches while using it.

Of course, before we get going, I should mention that for most average searches, for example your quick n’ dirty “restaurants near me” type of search, there’s not much needed other than a few basic keywords. Google has spent a lot of effort trying to make using their search engine as straightforward as literally typing in your question. But if you’re not getting results that are what you need, or you’re digging a little deeper into a research topic, there are a few things you can do to tighten up your search.

Operators

Search engines, including Google, use “operators,” or commands or symbols that help define a search. Here are a few that might be of use:

Quotation Marks: If you put your search terms in quotation marks, you are telling Google to search specifically for that phrase. Imagine, for example, you have a piece of a song stuck in your head and want to figure out what it is. So you type in “he’ll rip your lungs out Jim” and quickly find out that it’s from Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon.

And now that I’ve got that song stuck in my head, I’m going to share the ear worm:

Ok, now, Google might well have returned the correct results without the quotation marks, but by adding them you force it to look at those specific words in that specific order, and increase the likelihood of getting the right results. This is especially useful if the phrase you’re looking at has a lot of common words in it.

Minus sign: By placing a minus sign (-) in front of a term, you’re telling Google to disregard results that have that term in it. For example, maybe you want to do some research on lions, but you want to make sure you don’t get bogged down in results about the Detroit Lions. So, your search looks likes this:

Lions -Detroit -football -mascot

That tells Google to disregard any results that include the terms Detroit, football, or mascot, and so the results you want about the animal are now much more likely to end up at the top of the search.

Site: By putting site: (the word “site” followed by a colon) and then putting a web address after it (without any spaces!), and then putting in your search terms, you’re telling Google you only want results from that website. So, let’s say you want to search for something on the New York Times website. You’d craft your search like this:

site:nytimes.com [search terms]

You can also do with just domains, like .gov, or .edu, so if you just want results from government websites, for example, you can narrow your search to that particular domain.

OR: This one actually expands rather than narrows a search. By putting OR (capital letters) between two search keywords, you’re telling Google to give you results that include either term. Why not just put both terms in the search bar and call it good? Because then Google starts off looking for sites with BOTH terms, rather than just one or the other.

Creating a search query

When you’re creating a search, for probably 90+% of your searches you’re probably good with just typing in a phrase or a few keywords. But if you want to really nail down your search for some important information, here are some additional tips:

Use those operators: Yeah, those operators I talked about in the first part of this post? Use ’em.

Be specific: the more specific your terms are, the more accurate your search is likely to be. Just putting in “fish” will get you a lot less specific results than “tropical fish,” for example, and a search for “zebra fish” will be more specific still.

Ditch common words: Most search engines ignore words like “a,” “and,” “but,” “the,” etc. so don’t bother cluttering up your search with them. The exception is if you’re including them in quotation marks to make a specific phrase inquiry.

Try another search engine: Google is by far the most common search engine, but there are many others. Try Bing, or DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo, for example. Each uses a different algorithms, so can get you somewhat different results. If you’re not getting the results you want, try a different search engine and see what happens.

Regroup and try again: If you still aren’t getting the results you want, take another look at your search. Are there better ways you could phrase it? Different terms you could use? Try some different keywords and see if the results improve.

A Word About Algorithms

Most search engines use their own home brewed algorithms – their own set of rules and instructions – to get results for you. That’s why different search engines might get you different results even though you’re using the same search terms.

But a word of warning — a lot of sites track your online activity (Google is pretty notorious for this) and then try to plug that information into their algorithm. The idea is that by doing so, you’ll get results you’re more likely to like.

Sounds good, right? Tailored search results from a site that already kinda knows what you want?

In most cases, no big deal. But… it does result in skewing your results, and means that if you do a search and someone else does the exact same search, the results might turn out differently. Something to keep in mind when searching.

And, more disturbingly, by tailoring results this way, search engines might send people down “rabbit holes” or hem them into “information silos” where they only get certain types of results. Conspiracy theorists might tend to get results that reinforce their beliefs, while leaving out results that might counter them (i.e., someone who is anti-vaccine in their views might tend to get results that reinforce those anti-vaccine views, giving them the false sense that their views are both correct and more widely held than they actually are). Politically active people might tend to get results that, again, reinforce their particular beliefs and avoid countering points of view. So, be aware of this possibility as you search!

Go Forth and Search!

Hopefully you’ll find a kernel or two of useful information in the above that will help you get better results out of Google. These tips in general apply to other search engines as well (though you may need to find a help section on the operators, as not all search engines use the same ones). One big key takeaway I think is the “regroup and retry” advice – if at first you don’t get the results you need, don’t be afraid to try again, whether with a different search engine or with new search terms.

Until next time, folks! Stay curious!