How to Search

Eight Tips to Google Like a Pro

The internet is inconceivably large. In fact, it’s essentially endless! Sometimes it’s easy to find the information you need, but often trying to find something specific can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. These eight tips can help you improve your search results and zero in on what you’re looking for more quickly.

Use quotation marks

If you put quotation marks around your search terms, Google will search for webpages containing that exact phrase.
EXAMPLE: “I’m not a cat”

Limit to news

If you are looking specifically for standards-based news articles that contain your search term, narrow your initial search results by clicking on the tab labeled “News.”

Use Basic Boolean Operators

Use AND (all uppercase) when you’re searching to find results that contain more than one exact search term. 
EXAMPLE: “I’m not a cat” AND “Zoom call” 

Use OR (all uppercase) when you’re searching to find content containing only one of your search terms: “Search Term1” OR “Search Term2” OR “Search Term3”
EXAMPLE: “I’m not a cat” OR “Zoom court hearing” OR “Rod Ponton”

Use parentheses to group operators

You can use parentheses to order the search operations the way you would in a mathematical equation. For example, to search for only one of two search terms AND a third term, you would search: (“Search Term1” OR “Search Term2”) AND “Search Term3” 
EXAMPLE: (“I’m not a cat” OR “cat filter”) AND “Zoom court hearing”

Narrow the time frame

When you get results for a search, click on “Tools” and then “Any time.” In the dropdown box, you’ll be able to choose from results in the past hour, past 24 hours, past week, past month, past year, or enter a custom date range.

Search a specific website

Limit your results to one specific website by adding “site:WEBSITENAME.com” to the search terms. For example, a search for the phrase “cat videos” on Facebook would be: 
EXAMPLE: site:facebook.com “cat videos”

Search one section of a specific website

You can also search for a specific subdomain or subdirectory on a particular website. For example, to quickly search Facebook (a website) for groups (a subdirectory) that use the exact phrase “cat videos” your search bar should look like this: 
EXAMPLE: site:facebook.com/groups “cat videos”

Use - to exclude from results

To exclude particular terms or websites from your search, just type - (the minus sign) before it. For example, if you wanted to search Facebook groups for the term “cat videos” but wanted to exclude results with the phrase “Zoom filter” you would search: 
EXAMPLE: site:facebook.com/groups “cat videos” - “Zoom filter”