ENGL 105: English Composition

How To 

This guide describes how to get the best out of Google searches and much more.

For instance, did you know…  

• You can set Google up to alert you for new results in a search?
• Save Word documents to Google and access them anywhere you can access Google?
• Make your own Google Maps?
• Take your favorites and bookmarks with you?

Use Google Search Tools

Search Tools will appear on your results page after you've searched. You can narrow down your search to videos, books, places and much more. It's a great time saver.

1. Under the search box, use options like Images or News to filter your results. Find even more options under More.

2. Click on Search tools. Available options will vary based on your search and the filters you've already used, so you won't see the same options every time.

3. If you don't like your results after you've applied a filter, you can go back to standard unfiltered Google results, click Web at the top of the search results page. To remove any filters you've added through Search tools, click Clear.

Top Google Search Tips

Google is so easy to use you don’t have to be an expert to get great search results, but here are some top tips that will help get rid of the stuff you don’t want:

1.   Quotes

Use quotes around any set of words sought as a phrase (these words in this order). This is especially useful when searching for proper names so you don’t get results where the two words are on the page but unrelated.

Compare Gerald Ford to "Gerald Ford".

2.   Exclude

- can be used to exclude terms.

Compare Matisse to Matisse –network.

3.   Synonyms & OR

Use synonyms--try to think of several different ways that your search term or concept could be stated. Combine the terms with or. Or must be in caps or it is ignored.

Compare multicultural to multicultural OR cultural diversity.

4.   Google Site Search

Did you know that with Google Advanced search you can restrict your search to just one specific site? This kind of search comes in handy when you are pretty sure the information exists on a site, but you can’t find it. To use it, enter your search tem(s) and site:sitedomain.

5. Google Advanced Search

Site search is just one of the features of Google Advanced. With Advanced you can limit results by language, region, domain, and much more. The options available can really make a difference.

You may want to try 

Google Scholar searches across many scholarly disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, and universities with non-scholarly results filtered out. Some of these scholarly results include the free full text and many more are available for free to PNW students, faculty, and staff.

Google Scholar

Free Full Text from PNW Library Databases

Sometimes Google Scholar points you to resources for which you have to pay to get the full text, but PNW students faculty and staff can get many articles from Google Scholar for free!

If you start your search from this results available automatically display to the side of an article with a direct link to the article. If you are off-campus you'll need to log in with your PNWID.