Building Better Google Searches: Basic Search Strategies
Be aware that Google only skims the surface of the Internet!
If you use only Google for your research, you will miss out on a lot of high quality, easy-to-use, free-to-you resources (also known as the Deep Web) available through the CSUSB libraries! See our video below for a brief explanation.
TRY THESE STRATEGIES NOW!
EXAMPLES OF BASIC SEARCH STRATEGIES
Pay attention to the order of your keywords:
grass snake is different from snake grass
Enclose phrases in quotation marks:
“fathers who stay at home”
No need to type “and” between terms:
“hubble telescope” pulsars
Use the OR command for similar terms:
nutrition OR diet cancer
Run separate searches for different word endings:
politics corruption
political corruption
politicians corruption
Use the site command (site:) this way to restrict results to educational institution sites:
“feminist theory” site:edu
Use the site command (site:) this way to restrict results to government sites:
“feminist theory” site:gov
Use the site command (site:) this way to restrict results to nonprofit sites:
“feminist theory” site:org
