HSLS Update

Get More Out of Google with Smarter Searching

Google is the most commonly used general Web search engine, and provides access to an astounding amount of information. However, sometimes it can be easy to miss important information in a database containing billions of documents.  Everyone knows how to use Google by typing in a word or two, but this simplistic approach can miss valuable and important information.

Knowing just a few advanced strategies can help you target higher quality information, and enable you to search the Web more effectively.

Selected Google Search Tips

Know when, and when not, to use Google. Google is great and has a lot of important information, but it does not replace a MEDLINE search or authoritative texts, especially in the health sciences where quality information is essential. On the other hand, sometimes you can locate information in Google that is hard to find elsewhere, such as government and association reports, statistics, or information about organizations and individuals.

Use quotes for phrases, especially very specific ones like association names or article titles, e.g. “American Heart Association”. This is not always necessary, but it can make a big difference. However, don’t get too restrictive. Requiring “type 2 diabetes” as a phrase will miss documents that use different phrasing.

Use the tilde (~) to find synonyms, plurals, and related words if you are doing a broad search on a topic. Searching ~nutrition ~diabetes will find Web documents with the words nutrition, nutritious, nutritional, nutritionist, eating, food, protein, carbohydrates, etc., and also the words diabetes, diabetic, diabetics, insulin, etc. This allows your search to pick up more relevant documents.

Search on more than a couple of words. The more words you enter, the more specific your results will be. Google searches the full text of Web documents. Imagine words that are likely to appear on the documents you want, and include them in your search to make pages with those words appear higher on the list. Compare ~nutrition ~diabetes to ~nutrition ~diabetes ~guideline.

Add common words that are almost certain to appear on desired pages to help focus your results.  For example, if looking for statistics on a topic, e.g. ~hiv ~adolescent, add ~statistic OR ~data OR table to your search. This will help to locate pages containing statistics about your topic words. Compare this to a search on ~hiv ~adolescent.

For more Google search tips, see Expert Googling: Best Practices and Advanced Strategies for Using Google in Health Sciences Libraries, a poster presented by the author at the 2005 Medical Library Association Annual Meeting <www.hsls.pitt.edu/services/instruction/presentations/mla2005/expertgoogling.pdf>.

To request a class or group presentation about searching Google by an HSLS librarian call 412-648-8796 or send e-mail to medlibq@pitt.edu.

--Ammon Ripple