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Research Skills

SMART SEARCHING

‘Search Operations’ are specific inputs that you put into the Google search bar to narrow down the search results.

Every word matters

Every word matters

Try searching for [who], [the who] and [a who]

Order matters

Order matters

Try searching for [blue sky] and [sky blue]

Capitalisation does not matter

Capitalisation does not matter

Try searching for [apple] and [APPLE]

Punctuation does not matter

Punctuation does not matter

Try searching [red, delicious% apple?] and [red delicious apple]

"Social psychological factors"

Use this if you are looking for an exact phrase - just add quotation marks.

This will only produce result that contain the exact phrase you search for. It will not include any results that have similar phrases.

You can also ‘link’ two phrases together using a + sign between them. This forces an exact search.

(fruit OR farm) apple

This helps make searches more specific. It groups terms together in relation to the main search.

For example:

Searching just ‘Apple’ brings up anything and everything.
Searching (fruit OR farm) will bring up results that contain one or both terms; (fruit AND farm) will only bring up results with both terms.

This dramatically decreases the number of search results.

‘BUT, I WON’T REMEMBER ALL THAT!!!’

Don’t worry - you don’t have to!

You can also use the ‘Google Advanced Search’ page to save you having to remember the search operations mentioned above.

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