Overview

On Google's home page you'll find:

Query box - Enter one or more words. You can use a minus sign to eliminate a term and quotation marks for phrases. Google will ignore small, very common words unless you insert a plus sign in front of them.

Language Window - Choose records in French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, or Danish.

Preferences Link (Language, Display & Filtering Options)
his leads to a preferences page where:
- You can choose to display search tips, help screens and  messages in French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, or Danish and/or to retrieve only pages written in those languages.
- You are given the option os seeing 10, 20, 30, 50, or 100 records per page of results.
-Turn filtering on or off

Google Search option - If you click this after entering terms in the query box, your search will be executed.  If you click it with nothing in the query box, it leads to a page almost identical to the home page, except that i

"I'm feeling lucky" - Will automatically take you to the page that Google would have listed first in your results.  If you're really lucky, it works.

"Advanced Search" - Takes you to Google's Advanced Search page

 "About Google" - Takes you to a choice of help and information screens.

"Google Web Directory" - Google's implemtemtation of Open Directory.

"Google Buttons"  - This will lead you through the process of placing a Google Search button on the personal toolbar of your browser.  With this, by highlighting a word or phrase on any page your are viewing and then clicking the button, a Google search will be performed.
 
 
 

Search Features Provided by Google (Home Page)

To search for a phrase, use quotation marks.

Example:   "sleep disorders"

Google automatically "ANDs" all of your words.

To "NOT" a term, put a minus in front of it
 

Example:   graphics -clipart
You can use a plus, but it is unnecessary, since Google "ANDs" all of your words anyway.

The plus is useful if you have a very common word which Google treats as a stopword and you want to search it anyway.  Google indexes all words, but ignores common words in search queries unless you use the plus.

Google has recently introduded an OR option.  To look for treaties signed in Paris, but not the 1783 treaty, you could use:

    paris treaty OR treaties -1783

Google recommends (using its example) that you search for Episode I using Episode +I
For most searches of this type, however, it seems that searching for it as a phrase, "Episode I", makes more sense, seems to produce the same results and is more consistent with how you would search for that in almost all other search engines.

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Field Searching

         Title
         allintitle:
          Example:
                allintitle:cornwall
 

Title can be more easily searched using Google's Advanced version and seleinging the title option in the Occurences box.

          URL
          allinurl:
            Example:
                allinurl:cam.ac.uk
 

URL can be more easily searched using Google's Advanced version and selecting the URLoption in the Occurences box.

          Site  (Host)
          term site:url
          Example:
                training site:onstrat.com

This will retrieve sites from a particular host.  It seems that you cannot use the site: part alone, but must combine it with another term. The above example will retrieve pages from the Online Strategies site which include the word "training".  It will work on adjoining parts of a url (tradoc.army.mil, army.mil), but you must have at least the domain (.com, .org, .mil, etc.) included for it to work.

Link.
link:url/
Example:
      link:www.onstrat.com/
Similar to the link: in several other search engines, this will allow you to locate pages which link to a particular page. The example above will produce a list of pages which  contain a link to the Online Strategies home page (www.onstrat.com).

Language - Use the language window on the home page and choose from French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, or Danish.  The "language options" link just below the window allows you to set your preferences so that help screen and other messages are in one of these languages.

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Truncation

Google does not provide any form of truncation.

Advanced Search Page

You can:

• Select to search by word or phrase from a pull-down window
• Exclude ("NOT") words or phrases from your search
• Limit results to any one of 14 languages
• Specify 10, 20, 30, 50, or 100 results per page
• Find pages which link to a particular page
• Find pages which are similar to a particular page

Output

On the home page, if you click "Google Search," you'll be taken to an almost identical page that allows you to choose:

            10, 30, or 100 results per page

Google ranks output by popularity and by the proximity of your search terms within the record."  Google's output is interesting in that it allows you to go to the page as it is currently on the Web, or to go to a "cached" copy which Google stored when it retrieved the page.

Google automatically searches Open Directory as well as the Google Web database.  If there are matches within the Open Directory, you will find a link to the category at the top of the Google results page, "Categories".  Google has searched not only the directory headings, but the page descriptions within that category.  Categories are listed according to popularity of the matching page, as with Google Web results.

 In results records, Google provides:

• Retrieved pages grouped by host.  For example, pages from the Britannica.com site will be shown together. After the top-ranked page from the site, the records for the other pages will be indented.
• An excerpt of text surrounding your search term ("KWIC" for the cognoscenti) with your query terms highlighted
• The URL
• "Show matches (Cache)" A link to the cached copy, which Google stored when the record was found by Google  (This can be useful when you look at the current page, don't find your term and want to see the original.  It also is handy if the current page is not available at the moment.) This also causes matching terms within the actual Web page results to be highlighted.
• Page size
• "Similar pages" (formerly Google Scout link).  Clicking on this will lead to similar pages (pages with content words, etc. similar to the original record.)
• "More from ...."  Additional pages from this site (but which do not necessarily contain your query terms.)
• When you submit a query, Google now also searches the RealNames database of company and product names, slogans, etc.  If it finds a match, a link (identified with the RN superscript) will be shown.

 

 
 
 

Once you are on a results page, you have the option of choosing 10, 30, or 100 results per page.

At the top of results pages, you'll find an "Email These Results" link, which will allow you to easily email the results to others.

The "Language options " link allows you to set your language options from the results page

You also will see "SafeSearch is Off" - This is an adult content filter option and by clicking this link you can turn it on.

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Directory

Google provides a link to Open Directory.  When you do a search on Google, it also searches Open Directory.  If there are matches within Open Directory, you will find a link to the categories at the top of the Google results page, under "Relevant Categories". Google has searched not only the directory headings, but the page descriptions within that category.

Summary

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