Winter 2017

Google Search Features

Make Your Searches More Efficient

Murielle Mambo

Did you ever ask yourself if it’s possible to:

Using Google, all of these things are possible! This article will cover many tips on how to effectively use Google search.

Use the command “site:” to search one specific web site. All your search results will be from that specific web site and its sub-sites. Use the format “search word(s) site:site name”. For example, “computer labs site:uwaterloo.ca” will provide links for University of Waterloo web sites that contain “computer labs”.
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase. When you’re searching for something specific, try using quotes to look for your exact term. Putting your search parameters in quotes tells the search engine to search for the whole phrase. For example, “how do I print in arts” uwaterloo instead of how do I print in arts uwaterloo.
Use your web browser as a countdown timer. If you’d like to set a timer, Google can provide an alarm.

Use a minus sign if you would like to do some research on the Waterloo Warriors, yet you wouldn’t like any information coming from uwaterloo, you can search “waterloo warriors –uwaterloo”. By doing this, your search results will contain information regarding the Waterloo Warriors but none of those results will come from uwaterloo.

Find your public IP address. All you need to do is type in “ip address” in the search bar.

Find a specific type of file. For instance, let’s say that you are looking for a PDF file called “How to print”, you could search “How to print filetype:pdf”. All of your search results will be PDF files.
Google Advanced Search is also another useful tool to focus your search. It allows you to customize your search words, phrases, language, file type etc.