Using Google Like a Pro: Part One

Do you ever wonder how some people always seem to find what they’re searching for online? You can become a searching expert, too! All you need are some neat Googling tricks hidden up your sleeve. Today is the first post in a series about using Google like a pro to get librarian-level search results. The first trick I want to share is domain-specific searching.

Domain-specific searching takes your general keyword search and narrows it to a domain (for instance, waukeganpl.org) or a domain ending (.com, .org, .gov and .edu are examples). This type of search is useful if you have a favorite site for information, or you are working on a homework project and need to find reliable information.

Let’s imagine that you’re interested in buying a book, but you want to know whether it’s ever been reviewed by the New York Times. This is the first search you try:

Your results look like this:

Yikes! Not exactly what you’re looking for. Try this little trick for narrowing your results to just the New York Times website:

This time, Google searched only the New York Times website for the phrase President Kennedy: Profile of Power.

The very first result is a link to the book review. When using the site: function, make sure to type the website address or domain ending directly after site: without any spaces. Happy Googling!