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Research Process: A Step-By-Step Guide: 2e. Search Strategies

Search Strings

Boolean Operators

Tip!

Boolean Operators

Truncation

Google Alert

It's easy to get email notifications any time that Google finds new results on a topic you’re interested in.  For example, you could keep up with news stories for class.

  1. Visit Google Alerts 
  2. In the "Create an alert about" box, enter in the words you want to get email notifications for.
  3. Click Show options to customize things like how often you get alerts, types of websites you want to search, and the email address for your alerts.
  4. Click Create Alert.

Search Strategy Builder

Boolean Machine

Google Search Strategies

For more advanced searching tips, visit their Inside Search site.

Search Strategies Examples
Queries are not case sensitive.

Barack Obama and barack obama produce the same results.

Results will typically include each word or punctuation mark included in the query. Some stop words or exceptions apply.

 

Keep queries descriptive, but use as few terms as possible. Avoid natural language.

Use colorado statehood instead of when did colorado first become a state.

Google automatically truncates search terms. To prevent this, use a + sign in front of each term.

A query on child retrives results with "children" and "childcare".

Use double quotations marks (" ") to search terms as an exact phrase.

A query on "Barack Hussein Obama II" will retrieve only those sites that refer to Obama by his full name. Sites that refer to him as simply 'Barack Obama' may be overlooked.

Use the site: feature to limit your results to a specific website or class of websites.

The query cloning site:online.wsj.com will only retrieve articles about cloning from the online version of the Wall Street Journal.
A query on cloning site:.gov will only retrieve results within the government domain.

To allow for either of several words to appear in your results, use the OR operator. The operator must be in all caps.

A query on hotel OR lodging OR inn will retrieve results with any or all of these terms.

Thank you

Thanks to the Denver Campus Librarians at Johnson & Wales University for letting us modify and use this at our library.