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Middlesex Campus Library

Middlesex Advanced Google Searching

How to Narrow Your Search in Google Scholar

First, you go to the website and type in... Let's say "cats".

That search brings up about 1,450,000 results -- too many to look through.

Then, you realize you actually want "domestic cats", so you search that and...

346,000 results... Still too much. Next, how about searching that in quotes: "domestic cats"...

This gives you about 38,500 results. Much more manageable. But still, we can narrow this farther.

You want to find new research on cats, so, on the left hand side, you change "Any time" to "Since 2015"...

About 2,370 results. From here, see if you can find what you need. However, you may need to narrow your topic further.

Are you looking for information about free-roaming domestics cats? About 209 results. Or how domestic cats affect the owner? About 785 results.

 Tip: It is helpful to have a more detailed idea of what you want to search so that you can effectively narrow your results.