And BeyondHow to Find What You’re Looking for

on the Internet

A presentation atThe Wadhams Free Libraryby Sara Kelley-MudieJune 15, 2011

?Google doesn’t understand “natural language”

Where and how you search can be as important as what you search for

What are you really looking for?

Words that will definitely be on a website with the answer to your question

Words that might be there (or will narrow your result)

If at first you don’t succeed. . . search, search again!

Google is the new spell check

Limit to government sites—add site:gov to your search

Limit to edu sites—add site:edu to your search

A word on domain types

Restricted domains• .edu

– Limited to post-secondary accredited educational institutions

• .gov– Limited to U.S. government

agencies

• .mil– Limited to use by the U.S.

military

Unrestricted domains• .com• .org• .info• .net

– Anyone can register a site with one of these domains

www.google.com

Domain

There are MANY other domains, including country-specific domains (ex. .au, .ca

Search within a particular site

Limit results by eliminating keywords

Picture Perfect

Image: 'Across the Chinese Countryside' http://www.flickr.com/photos/95572727@N00/1341027869

The power of the sidebar

The Wonder wheel can be a great way to narrow search results

Use related search terms to see what keywords other searchers used for the same topic

Image: 'The droids we're googling for' http://www.flickr.com/photos/49462908@N00/3951143570

Find the time

Do the math

Conversions

Game in progress

Local results

Business type + zip code

Wikipedia 101

From Popes to pop culture

Comparing two revisions

Over 400 edits in one day

Handling vandalism

http://bit.ly/googleandbeyond All resources (including this slideshow) available at: