Don’t ask Google questions! Search only key terms or phrases.

Try Google Scholar for more authoritative and trustworthy information.

Put your search term in “quotation marks” to avoid finding words separated and unrelated.

Try restricting your search more:

· Go to the Google “More” menu on top of the page, then go to “even more”.  Here you can search very specifically: for example, by video, image, Google Earth, books, news and much more.

Use Operators:

 + sign: Results similar to quotation marks, will only return results with both words. Ex. global+warming

 - sign: If you want to exclude a specific word from your search results, use a minus sign. Ex. New York –City

Define: Good for quick word definitions.  Ex. Define:happy

Author: For results by a specific author.  Ex. Author:Freud

OR: To expand results, you can give Google a choice between two keywords by using OR.  Ex. World Cup (2011 OR 2006)

Limit by site domain (the type of site you are looking for). Ex. Site:*.gov