How to teach students to use Google search: Search tools will be different based on the type of results you’re looking at, but may include:
- Publish date: Limit results according to when they were published on the Web.
- Verbatim: Search for exact words or phrases.
- Dictionary: Find definitions, synonyms, images, and more for your search term.
- Private: If you’re signed in to your Google Account, you can see content that was shared with you on Google+ or Gmail.
- Nearby: See results for your current location.
- Videos: Filter by the length of video, quality, and source, like youtube.com.
- Recipes: Filter by ingredients, cook time, and calories.
- Applications: Choose the price and operating system, or OS, for available apps.
- Patents: Select a patent’s filing or publishing date, the patent office it was filed in, filing status, and type. You can also do a patent search directly at patents.google.com.
Search tools you can use for Images results
- Size: Pick among large, medium, or icon, or set the exact dimensions.
- Color: Find images of a certain color, black and white, or transparent.
- Type: Only see images that are faces, photos, clip art, line drawings, or animated GIFs.
- Time: Find a photo that was recently published, or published on a certain date.
- Usage rights: See photos that you can reuse or modify. Learn how to find content to reuse.
Advanced Search filters you can use
- Websites: Language, Region, Last updated date, Site or domain, Where the search terms appear on the page, SafeSearch, Reading level, File type, Usage rights (find pages that you have permission to use)
- Images: Size, Aspect ratio, Color, Type (face, animated, etc.). Site or domain, Filetype SafeSearch, Usage rights (find images that you have permission to use)
Search operators- You can use search operators and other punctuation to get more specific search results.
| Symbol | How to use it |
| + | Search for Google+ pages or blood types
Examples: +Chrome or AB+ |
| @ | Find social tags
Example: @agoogler |
| $ | Find prices
Example: Nikon $400 |
| # | Find popular hashtags for trending topics
Example: #throwbackthursday |
| – | When you use a dash before a word or site, it excludes sites with that info from your results. This is useful for words with multiple meanings, like Jaguar the car brand and jaguar the animal.
Examples: jaguar speed -car or pandas -site:wikipedia.org |
| “ | When you put a word or phrase in quotes, the results will only include pages with the same words in the same order as the ones inside the quotes. Only use this if you’re looking for an exact word or phrase, otherwise, you’ll exclude many helpful results by mistake.
Example: “imagine all the people” |
| * | Add an asterisk as a placeholder for any unknown or wildcard terms.
Example: “a * saved is an * earned” |
| .. | Separate numbers by two periods without spaces to see results that contain numbers in a range.
Example: camera $50..$100 |
Search operators are words that can be added to searches to help narrow down the results. Don’t worry about memorizing every operator, because you can also use the Advanced Search page to create these searches.
| Operator | How to use it |
| site: | Get results from certain sites or domains.
Example: Olympics site:nbc.com To get results from multiple sites or domains, combine with OR. Example: Olympics site:nbc.com OR site:.gov |
| related: | Find sites that are similar to a web address you already know.
Example: related:time.com |
| OR | Find pages that might use one of several words.
Example: marathon OR race |
| info: | Get information about a web address, including the cached version of the page, similar pages, and pages that link to the site.
Example: info:google.com |
| cache: | See what a page looks like the last time Google visited the site.
Example: cache:washington.edu |
Note: When you search using operators or punctuation marks, don’t add any spaces between the operator and your search terms. A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but the site: nytimes.com won’t. While Google Search is a fantastic tool for searching the Internet in general, sometimes you need more tailored help when working on projects and gathering information. You can use some of Google’s specialized search tools to find the information you need.
Advanced search options include Filter by language, Filter by date, and Filter by filetype. Not filtered by usage rights, Free to use or share, and Free to use or share or modify even commercially are all “usage rights” options. Select a current event that is receiving a lot of media coverage and write a short summary of it. Then have them curate resources that help them understand the event by inserting links to sites that go into more depth on a particular aspect of the story. Finally, ask them to use news.google.com/newspapers to find newspapers from other countries and gain an understanding of how other countries portrayed the same event. They can translate the articles from non-English-speaking countries by using Google Translate.
- Google Search bar: This is near the top of the results page, where you can see your query and modify it or enter a new one.
- Ads: Appear in the right-hand column and sometimes at the top of the results in a colored box. Marked “Ads,” so you can easily identify them as paid results.
- Natural results: Below ads that are not paid for by anyone, and can’t be bought.
- Filters: These links are at the top navigational menu, just below the search bar – more explained below on these. Filters: When you complete a Google search, there are a number of filters you can apply to your search to narrow your results. These filters appear below the search box. With filters, you can narrow your search results to images, videos, maps, shopping, and more by clicking on one of these filters.
- Knowledge Graph: When you search for a person, place, or thing Google may show this special information box on the right-hand side of the screen.
- Modifiers: You can use special characters and words to get more specific search results; these are referred to as Modifiers. For example, if you use a hyphen (-) before a word in a query it will exclude results that contain this word. This is a great poster you could include on your class site/blog or hang in your room to teach students about the important role these modifiers play in searching.
- Search Tools: To refine your search further, click on Search tools and you can filter results by where or when they originated.
HOW TO TEACH STUDENTS TO USE GOOGLE SEARCH: