Google tools

It can be rather fun to explore the possibilities of the Google website beyond the first search page that we use so often.  At a recent staff meeting I shared a couple of its other features with colleagues - useful for staff to know and students to know, too.  (And, in my experience, not ones you should assume people do know).

In the rush to get TO the information, students can all to easily ignore the important "DEFINE" step in the information process, and end up wandering around on the net without effectively and efficiently locating the information they need.

Google language tools

• translation into over a dozen languages of either text or a web page
• setting your Google home page preferences into languages including common ones (English, French) and exotica (Elmer Fudd, Klingon…)

Google advanced operators and alternate query types

• Google has a number of these, listed on the above page, which help focus searches or make them return a more useful set of responses.  Two favourites are define: and site:  .
• define:word use this to obtain web definitions for a given word eg. define:http
• search word or term site:url use this to search a particular site, not the whole web. eg. jane mcgrath site:http://www.smh.com.au
• There are other operators
• Leave no space between the operator, colon and word/url/other

Essentials of Google Search

• There's a bunch of useful information on this page (link in heading).  Many students don't know some of the tricks and tips on this page until they have been shown
• eg. inverted commas will refine a search
• 
  
  Jane McGrath gets 1,230,000 hits
• 
  
  “Jane McGrath ” gets 119,000 hits
• 
  
  “Jane McGrath ” CANCER gets 34,300 hits