Not getting what you're looking for when you search?
Try these advanced Google search strategies. Sample searches are in [square brackets]
Strategy |
What it does |
Example |
OR |
searching for one term OR another term |
[Istanbul OR Constantinople] |
site: |
searches only within a specific site (or subdomain) |
[schedule site:bcdschool.org] |
filetype: |
search for a specific type of file (ex. PPT, PDF, XLS) |
[lesson plan filetype:ppt] |
-term |
eliminate terms from your results |
[mullet -hair] |
word * word |
* is a placeholder that will be filled in with any word |
[every year * people...] |
"word" |
find exact word - no synonyms. Also indicates that a term
must be in the results
|
["freedom"] |
"set of words" |
search for an exact quote or phrase |
["I have a dream"] |
around(X) |
Find pages containing two words or phrases within X words of each other |
[student AROUND(3) activism] |
site:[tld] |
search within a specific country using the top level domain (tld)
search [tld countryname] to find the top level domain
|
[vaccination site:jp] |
context term |
add a term to your search to specify the type of source you're looking for |
ex: [map], [timeline], [schematic], [infographic] [chart]
|
Use the menus in your search results to narrow and refine results
Specify a time period (Click on Tools --> Any time to select a time range or enter a custom range)

Sort image results by color (Tools --> Color)

Limit video search results by duration (Tools --> Any duration)

Use specialized search tools:
Ngram Viewer - charts the frequency of terms/search strings as they appear in GoogleBooks data from 1500-2019
Dataset Search - search for and download datasets
Google Scholar - search for academic journals (note: not all will be publicly available)
Reverse Image Search - click on the camera to upload an image to search for
Google Trends - explore the popularity of search terms over time and in different locations