LANGUAGE CENTER - STANFORD UNIVERSITY
As a Tool for Academic Writing
Introduction | Basics 1 | Basics 2 | Basics 3
Google Basics 3
In the final section of Google basics, we look at some useful "tricks" that have value
WILDCARD SEARCHES
Google allows you to put a * into any search to represent a missing word. This is especially valuable when searching for an exact phrase with a word in the middle you are unsure of. For example, is it "on this level" "in this level" or "at this level" when used to describe temperatures. If you Google "temperatures * this level", you'll get a clear answer.
It should be noted that sometime around the beginning of 2005, the "*" search disappeared as an option in Google, though it was still available in Google Scholar (see below). It mysteriously reappeared by early April. This is a lesson about Google--it is controlled by a corporation, not its users, and may change at any time. On the positive side, Google is constantly inventing and trying out new features. You can find these in Google Labs.
SEARCHING GOOGLE SCHOLAR
Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) is a Google experiment to index academic articles. If you are looking for only language samples in published academic writing, this is a good place. The searches are the same as for the main Google site. Not surprisingly, Google Scholar is also an excellent application for researching content.