How to Make the Most out of your Google Searches
Adopted from an article by Chuck Rogers in the January 2003 "MacHome" magazine.

The most popular search engine for searching the internet is Google. Google was founded by Stanford University doctoral candidates Larry Page and Serge Brinin in 1998. Today, Google.com allows you to search for and find a large amount of information including an index to over 2 billion Web pages, over 35 million non HTML documents, new headlines, maps, phone listings, stock quotes and more then 600 million Unset messages.

The thing that makes Google different than other search engines is its one of a kind “PageRank” technology. Here’s how it works. When you enter a question into the search box, Google’s Web server passes the question to the Google Index Servers, where Google's huge Internet index is stored. The Index Servers are like the index in the back of a book. They determine where the words you typed in are located on the Document Servers. Once the appropriate documents are located, excerpts of each page are created and sent to your computer-all in 1.5 seconds.

The easiest way to use Google is to simply type a word or phrase into its search box and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. This will take you directly to the site Google’s PageLink technology ranks the most likely to meet your needs.

If that Web site doesn’t provide the results you were looking for, then click your browser’s Back button to return to the Google home page. Your original search words should still be in the search box. Just click the “Google Search” button (or press the Enter key on your keyboard) to return a list of suitable Web pages, complete with summaries. If the results are too broad, you can enter more terms to narrow the search.

In a basic search, Google always lists pages that contains all the words you entered. Don’t worry if you misspell something. Google will not only find all instances of sites that have the same misspelling, but it will also suggest the correct spelling and ask if you want to search that as well. Google is not case sensitive, so don’t worry about whether or not your search words are capitalized.

Here are four tips for basic searches with Google:

•Try the first words that pop into your head
•Qualify your search with more words
•Use words more likely to appear on a site with the information for which you are looking.
•Use keywords that are as specific as possible

Here’s a quick tour of Google’s result page:

•The Page Title is the biggest part of any result item.
•Below the Page Title is a text excerpt from the site.
•Below the text is the description and the Category listing from the Google Directory.
•Next is the exact URL of the result and the size of the text portion of the Web Page.
•If the site has been indexed by Google, you will see the words “Cached” and “Similar Pages” next. Click on Cached to see a copy of the Web Page you are seeking, or click on Similar pages to find other Web pages with similar content.

Specialty Searches

Category (Directory) Searches
If you don’t know exactly what to type into the search box, you might try searching by category. Point your browser to http://directory.google.com. This technique allows you to quickly narrow your search without having to know exactly what to type in the search box.



Catalog Searches
Have you ever wanted to find just the right gadget, but just couldn’t seem to locate it? Google’s new Catalog search feature allows you to search nearly 5,000 catalogs blazingly fast. Google Catalogs works a lot like Google Directories. First, point your browser to www.catalogs.google.com, then either enter your search terms or click on a category.

Google Catalogs provide scanned pages from the catalogs themselves, with the text containing your search terms highlighted in yellow.



Image Searches
Ever need a special picture or image? Google’s image search canvases over 400 million pictures available on he Web. Point your browser to http://images.google.com and type words that describe the picture you are looking for in the search box.



News Searches
Stay up to date on the latest news with Google News at news.google.com/. Google organizes the latest news into the top headlines. If you would like to see a list of resources Google uses to pull their news items, check out www.google.com/news.



Newsgroup Searches
Google has archived over 700 million messages from the Usnet, which is a collection of discussion forums also known as newsgroups. From http://groups.google.com/.



University Searches
Want to find latest alumni information on your college? Or perhaps you want to check on admissions policies for various schools. Google University Search makes it easy. Almost 800 school Web sites can be individually search on Google. To see if yours is listed, point your browser to www.google.com/universities.html.



Advanced Searches
The Google Advanced search page at www.google.com/advanced_search you can tailor how Google searches for by language, date, number of occurrences and domains.



All Google searches are “and” searches. This means that entering Hunt Red October in the search box is exactly the same as entering Hunt AND Red AND October (case is provided here a search). If you want to find a phrase with all the words in a particular order, enclose then in quotation marks, like this: “The Hunt for Red October.”

Each time you add another criteria to the search, Google effectively searches within the previous results, making it easy to zero in on exactly the data for which you are looking.

Now that you have mastered the basics, try 10 Ways to Get More out of Google, for finding phone numbers, addresses, street maps, stock quotes, dictionary definitions and over 35 million non-HTML documents.

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Created by Adam Young
East Buchanan Community School Tech Team
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