The Golden Rules of Google Searching:
1.Google queries are not case sensitive.
2.Google wildcards:Using an asterisk at
the beginning or end of a word will not provide you any
more hits than using the word by itself.
3.Google stems automatically:Consider a search for pet lemur dietary needs,Google will return a hit that includes the word lemur along
with petand, surprisingly, the word diet, which is short for dietary.
4.Google reserves the right to ignore you : Google ignores certain common words, characters, and single digits
in a search.Some common stop words include who, where,what, the, a, or an .
5.Ten-word limit. ???
Boolean operators AND, OR, and
NOT:
The most commonly used Boolean operator is AND.This operator is used to include multiple terms in a query. For
example, a simple query like hacker
could be expanded with a
Boolean operator by querying for hacker
AND cracker.The latter query
would include not only pages that talk about hackers but also sites that talk about hackers and the snacks they
might eat. Some search engines require
the use of this operator, but Google does not.The term AND is redundant to Google. By default, Google automatically searches
for all the terms you
google
baidu
|
Search
results with google and baidu
|
google
AND baidu
|
Search
results with google and baidu
|
Another common Boolean operator is NOT. Functionally the opposite of the
AND operator, the NOT operator excludes a word from a search. One
way to use this operator is to
preface a search word with the minus sign (–). Be sure to leave no space between the minus sign and the search term.
google
NOT baidu
|
NOT operator does
work actually!!! Why???
|
google
-baidu
|
Search
results with google without baidu
|
A less common and sometimes more confusing Boolean operator is
OR.The OR operator, represented
by the pipe symbol ( | )or simply the word OR in uppercase letters, instructs Google to locate either one term or another in a query.
google
OR baidu
|
Search
result with google or baidu
|
google
| baidu
|
Search
result with google or baidu
|
Let’s take a look at a very complex example, the exact mechanics of
which we will discuss in the
next chapter:intext:password | passcode intext:username | userid | user
filetype:csv
The request asked of
Google would read, “Locate all pages that have either password or pass-code in the text of the
document. From those pages, show me only the pages that
contain either the words username, userid, or user in
the text of the document.
For the purposes of
learning how to create queries, all we need to remember is that Google read our query from left to right.
Google’s cut and dry approach to combining Boolean operators is
still very confusing to the
reader. Fortunately, Google is not offended (or affected by) parenthesis.The previous query can also be
submitted as intext:(password | passcode) intext:(username | userid | user)
filetype:csv
You also can use advanced search:
