S01 E04 Searching Smarter in Google

Hello, and welcome to episode four of the Office Tech EDU Podcast, bringing you technology tips, tricks, and tutorials in bite-size pieces today for you to use at your desk tomorrow. My name’s Beth Heyden and I thank you for joining me. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to search smarter in Google. There’s way more to searching in Google than typing in a few keywords and hoping for the best, although that’s what many of us do on a regular basis. This usually ends up in you having to weed through them to see if that’s what you were hoping for. It can be overwhelming to know that you have several pages to search through to find the one item that you might actually want. Let’s get started. 

When searching within the Google browser, you know what keywords you’re looking for, and what outcome you’d like to get, but how do you get the best results for your search. 

• “ “ Putting quotes around a word, or phrase will produce exact matches. 
• And/Or using the words and or in your search words will help produce more results specific to what you’re looking for. Example: School, Institution, University, College
• - Placing a minus in front of a word will exclude that word/topic from your search. Broncos -horses -college will produce more results for the Denver Broncos football team than with the horse or college results mixed in. 
• + However, placing a + in front of a word will do the same thing. Broncos +football will eliminate the horses but include both Boise State and the Denver Broncos, along with any other Broncos team out there. 
• @ Are you looking for a social media post someone posted but you’re not sure what site they posted to? Add the @ symbol before their handle and Google will display only what's on social media for it. 
• # Same goes for the hashtag. Does your district have a # motto, you can search by entering in the # and motto and those posts will show up in the search. 
• $ working within a budget? Add a $ in front of your price when searching. $4000 car will produce car listings and advertisements for cars in that range. 
• . . Placing . . As a range, placeholder works too. Should you need to look for wildfires in southern California between 2001 and 2003. Note: There is a space between the two periods. You can also use the word between, but you save four keystrokes using the two periods and with a single space. :-)
• Site: By using the word site with a colon will check on that site for what it is, you're looking for. 

Google’s built-in search features. Whether you open a new tab in chrome, or you go to Google.com you’ll see you have the option to merely ask Google what you’re looking for. “Search for wildfires in Southern California between 2001 and 2003” we get similar results to show up like when we used the two dots, however, the number grew, leading me to believe that the word between produces more results than the dots. 

When your search results show up, additional search options also pop up. I’m sure most of us have used the images and maps feature, but have you ever used the other tools? 

• News tab looks at news articles with your keywords in it. 
• Images, produces precisely that, images of your keywords. 
• Maps would search for the location or the name of a place in your search.
• Shopping would bring you to a page of items that are for sale that match your keywords
• Videos will show you videos that should match your search. If you select the other tabs before selecting the video tab, your results will be off. If you select videos after your search results show up, then you’ll have a better outcome on video. 
• Flights look at your location and will allow you to price comparison, directly from airline websites. Note: Southwest does not come up with these results. I’ve found some better deals looking this way than by sticking to my regular go tos for booking travel. 
• Finance Want to see how your stock or a potential company is doing? Go to the Finance tab and type in their name. You’ll see an overview of that company, compare that company to others, or other indexes, and see their finances. It’s interesting especially when you’re teaching your students or your own kids how to follow and research companies. 
• Books Don’t want to always shop for books through the website that sells everything? You don’t have to. Searching for books through the Google search will give you descriptions, previews, and options on where to buy. 

Searching in Images is fun, but many people tend to snag images they find online to put into presentations, or on publications or media. If the image isn’t part of the creative commons, meaning there’s not a copyright on it, it’s highly illegal and you, and students, can be sued. There is no protection for students or even private presentations. If it’s ever posted online and comes up in a search result, it's copyright infringement. Google allows you to search properly so you don’t violate any copyright laws.

That’s all the Google Searching we’re going to do today, as that was a lot in a short amount of time. I thank you for joining me on episode four of the OfficeTechEdu Podcast where hopefully you were able to snag a few new ways to search within Google to be more efficient or thorough in your searches. If you’re still working from home, I hope you’re able to stay sane. If you’re working outside of the home, please remain safe and healthy. Once again, I’m your host Beth Heyden and like always you can find today’s show notes on officetechedu.com, and please, feel free to follow me on twitter at OfficeTechEdu. Join me next time where we learn how to have our Gmail do some of the work for us. Until next time...bye!