LANGUAGE CENTER - STANFORD UNIVERSITY
As a Tool for Academic Writing
Introduction | Basics 1 | Basics 2 | Basics 3
Google Basics 1
This section covers three key concepts for searching. These are the basis for some good basic habits that will carry over to other forms of searching as well.
USING QUOTATIONS FOR EXACT MATCHES
When you put two or more words together in the Google search box, they can have different relationships. If you type English grammar into Google, the search engine automatically looks for sites containing both words, but not necessarily together. Try it now--open another window first though so you can go back to this one. (If you don't know how, either hit ctrl-N (Command-N on a Mac) or go to the File menu at the top of the browser window and select "New").
I did this on March 23, 2005 at 10:53PM Pacific time and got 5,320,000 hits. OK, now try typing grammar English (or gRAMMAR english -- Google ignores capitalization). This time I got "only" 4,410,000 hits. What happened? I don't know: Google's search algorithms are trade secrets (or secret from me anyway). I do know that the order of words affects your results. Now try (the grammar of English). The total drops to 3,940,000. Why? Again I don't know, because at the top of the page under the search box Google tells you "The following words are very common and were not included in your search: the of
Now put quotes around that phrase: "the grammar of English" and there are only 8,820 hits. Those represent web pages that have the exact phrase the grammar of English.
Here's the point: if you're looking for a specific phrase, always put quotes around it.
USING COMBINATIONS OF SEARCH TERMS
Sometimes, you need to find combinations
USING CACHED VERSIONS