Beginners notes about Google: Basic Operators + Required‐Forces Google to include the word. Can be used with stop words, as in 'over +the fence'. ‐ Excluded‐Excludes the word, ensuring that it will not appear of result, as in 'pig ‐bacon'.
•Google is case insensitive, meaning that 'gOoGle' is the same
Advanced Google Operators
as 'GOOGLE' and 'google'
Time‐based and Date‐based
•Search operators are case sensitive, meaning that 'OR' is not the same as 'or' •Without using any operators, Google will show pages with all words first, trying to find the words in order
OR Operator‐Gives you a choice. You can have 'one' OR 'the other', as in 'cats OR dogs'. Remember that this operator must be in all CAPS. You can also use the symbol for OR, '|', known as the pipe. " " Complete Phrase‐Putting words in quotes talls Google to search for the complete phrase. This can also include stop words, as in "the search engine". ~ Similar Words‐Search for similar words, or synonyms. Searching search ~tips will returns results with 'help', 'guide', 'tutorial' etc. term1 AROUND( n ) term2‐Limits results to those documents where term1 appears within a certain number of words of term2. For instance, [ search AROUND (3) engine ] will find only documents that have the words “search” within 3 words of “engine” – this is particularly useful when searching for common words that are relevant to your search only when in close proximity. * Wildcard Search‐The '*' is called a wildcard. Searching for 'looking for *' will return results like 'looking for dogs', 'looking for cats' etc. You can also use the wildcard with phrases, such as "Los Angeles * jobs" to search for jobs in Los Angeles, etc. .. Number Range‐Search within a range of numbers. Searching for 'computer $500..1000' will find computers between $500 and $1000 dollars.
•Google excludes common words (known as stop words) like
date: Last X Months‐ Search for 'new' pages Google added in the last X months, such as 'google date:3' date: accepts 3, 6 and 12. tbs=qdr: Limit Results by Time Period
'I', 'the', 'a' etc. •Pay attention to operators that must be used alone.
Google Image Search Showing only images of a certain type‐Adding &imgtype= to the search URI lets you filter your results to a certain type:
&imgtype=news (news only) &imgtype=face (faces only) &imgtype=photo (photos only) &imgtype=clipart (clipart only) &imgtype=lineart (lineart only)
Showing only images of a certain size‐Adding &imgsz= to the search URI lets you filter your results to a certain size: &imgsz=icon (small) &imgsz=small|medium|large|xlarge (medium) &imgsz=xxlarge (large) &imgsz=huge (large) Showing only images from a certain source‐Add "source:life" to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive. For example: https://images.google.com/images?q=Winter+Ol ympics+source:life will search the LIFE photo archive for images related to the Winter Olympics.
With Google's release of Search options you can now limit your search results by time period. The format is as follows:
&tbs=rltm:1 [real time results] &tbs=qdr:s [past second] &tbs=qdr:n [past minute] &tbs=qdr:h [past hour] &tbs=qdr:d [past 24 hours (day)] &tbs=qdr:w [past week] &tbs=qdr:m [past month] &tbs=qdr:y [past year]
filetype: Filetypes‐Google will return files of this type. Currently officially supported file types are pdf, ps, wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku, lwp, mw, xls, ppt, doc, wks, wps, wdb, wri, rtf, swf, ans, txt, but other are supported as well, like xml, cpp, java etc. Example: google filetype:pdf site: Restrict To Site‐ Restricts the results to the given domain. site:jwebnet.net will find all indexed pages on www.jwebnet.net, while site:jwebnet.net design will find all design‐related pages on www.jwebnet.net. che: Google Cache‐ Displays the page from Google's saved cache. Other words in the search will be highlighted in the returned page. Very helpful if a page is down or deleted.