Research help

It is often more effective to search for information on the Internet (meaning freely accessible websites not restricted behind paywalls) when you are looking for:

• Statistics
• Blogs
• Topics or ways of knowing that have historically been / are excluded from research and publishing
• Information by creators who have historically been / are excluded from research and publishing
• Open Access journals
• Government research and reports
• Non-profit organizations' research reports
• Think tanks' research reports
• Infographics
• Company information
• Information about a topic that you know nothing about 

We all use it - now let's learn to use it better! Improve your Googling skills to save time and make it easier to identify better sources of information.

Quotation marks

• 
• Use quotation marks around your search terms to search for the words in the exact order you would like, instead of separately.

intitle:

• 
• Use intitle: to retrieve webpages with your keywords in the title of the webpage

site:

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• Use site:. to retrieve webpages from URLs in the domain (.gov, .edu, .org) you specify.  

- (a hyphen or minus sign) 

• 
• Use - (a hyphen or minus sign) in front of words to exclude them from your search results.

OR

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  In the above example, Google will find results that include (election AND fraud) and (voter AND fraud).
• Use OR in between words to have either or both of the words included in your search results. OR must be capitalized. This is a good way to search for synonyms.

filetype:

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• Use filetype: to retrieve specific types of files (instead of html webpages). Works for finding most file types.

Combine strategies

• 
• Use several strategies at once for very specific results.