Better quality search hits

Are you searching for authoritative information online, but getting overwhelmed with irrelevant results from Google?

You can try other search engines, but if you insist on sticking with Google, try using one of these filters:

1. Site filter - Add one of the following to your search term: site:edu or site:gov or site:org
Note - no space between the letters and the colon, and no "dot" needed before the suffix.

Why use this? Think about where authoritative information comes from - educational institutions (websites ending in .edu), government agencies (.gov) and professional organizations and associations (.org)

Here's an example of a regular search for herbal supplements:

























Now here's the same search on sites that end in edu:































And on government sites:



























These screenshots may be a little hard to read, so feel free to go to Google and try these searches on your own. One thing that you CAN easily notice, though, is that the site:edu and site:gov results have no sponsored links (which are ads) while the regular Google search has lots of them along the right-hand side.


2. Filetype filter - Add one of the following to your search term: filetype:pdf or filetype:ppt
... again, no spaces between letters and colon.

Why use this? Journal articles and other educational documents are typically in pdf format. As for ppt (powerpoint) format, these usually originate from educational presentations that have been uploaded online.

Here's what my search results looked like when I filtered by filetype:

PDF:

























Powerpoint (ppt):



























Will the above types of filters guarantee accurate, reliable search results? No.

But you will get better overall quality of your search results.

BTW this works on the Yahoo search engine as well.

Try one or more of these filters. Then leave a comment here on how you made out. ;-)

Pauline

teachmeinternet.com