Education Week: Google and Boolean Operatives

Ok, this is from a genealogy class about using the internet as a tool and it is amazing information, but it's really just a Google tutorial. I promised my mother-in-law that I'd type them up for her. While the examples here are mostly genealogy based, I think that there's something here for everyone.

Customizing Your Google search:

• you can customize it into different languages
• you can change the number of results per page

Write a sentence out for what you're searching for and type in the key words from that sentence

Write words that you want to appear in the text you're hoping to see
Be specific
Use no more than 10 words in your search

Boolean Operatives:

• Using 'and +' means you want both words to show in your search. If you use the plus sign, don't use spaces between the words.
• Using a minus sign '-' means not, so if your child has to do a report on dolphins, but you don't want the Miami Dolphins to be part of that, in your search you would type: 'dolphins -Miami -football' to avoid getting those results.
• Using 'or' broadens your search to include either word
• Using quotations around a set of words will search for those two words in that order.
• Using parenthesis...example: if you type (mouse or mice) and (poison or trap) it will bring you results that contain one element of each set. ie a result with mice poison or mouse trap or mouse poison, etc
• Using '*'. Known as a wild card, this will work as a replacement for up to six letters. Must be proceeded by at least 3 letters. Example: I'm looking for the name Johnson, but I don't know if it is spelled Johnson, Johnston, Johnsen. I can type Johns* into Google and I'll get results that cover any spellings that follow that pattern.
• '*' can also be used for dates. Example: you type California Election "Oct * 2003" or "10/*/03" or "October * 2003" Google will find the day of the month of the California election in october of 2003
• Using '?' The question mark can help with alternate spellings as a replacement of one letter. Ex. Johns?n will bring results that could be Johnson Johnsun Johnsen, etc.
• Using '..' This can help with a numeric range. Say I'm looking for Iowa Maps that existed between 1800 and 1850. I type: Iowa Maps 1800..1850 (only two dots!)
• Using '~' This is called a tilde. If you are looking for a census guide you can type: census ~guide and it will bring results like census guide, census help, census tutorial

The following are for searching specific sites using Google's all-powerful search engine

• If you don't necessarily trust a link and want to know about it before you go type: info:and then the webpage. ex. info:www.ebay.com and it will bring up what looks like the results page, but specifically abou this address
• If you want to see sites that have a particular address as a link on their site, you type: link:and the site. If you found a great site for Irish Ancestry, this method could possibly lead you to similar sites.
• If you want to use Google to search for content on a specific site (Google is powerful whereas some sites little search boxes don't work as well) ex. I want to look for any instance of Anton Szuszutsky on RootsWeb. I type: "Anton Szuszutsky" site:www.rootsweb.com and it will only search on this site for this name.

Possibly a very boring post for most of you, but hey, you never know when this stuff'll come in handy.