Search Strings: Becoming a
Power Searcher
Assume your teacher assigns you a
project

You need to prepare a short presentation
on chemical compounds.
Go to Google and do a search.
 Write the word(s) you used to search on
the sheets
 Stop at the Google results screen…

Analysis

How many words did you use in your
search?
– One
(You need more skills)
– Two
(You need some help)
– Three
(Good start)
– More than three (Great start to searching!)
Analysis…

How many results did you get?
(look at the top of the results page for “Results 1 - 10 of about
2,450,000 for canola” line)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
>10 000 000
Between 5 000 000 and 10 000 000
Between 1 000 000 and 5000 000
Between 100 000 and 1 000 000
<100 000 (Best!)
More analysis…

Did you use advanced search?
1. Yes
2. No
3. I don’t know what that is
Search Tools
Choosing the best weapon for
searching!
What tools search the “Visible
Web”?
Meta-search engines e.g dogpile
 Search engines other than Google
 Wikipedia - use for keywords


Invisible Web…you need a database or
specialized search engine for this!
Meta-Search Engines

Browsers that search using more than one
search engine.
Examples:
www.dogpile.com
http://www.kartoo.com (visual)
www.clusty.com
What in the world are Nyms?
•Hyponyms
Words that focus a search
•Hypernyms
Words that are more general
Part Two: How DO I become a
Power Searcher?

Before you do any kind of a search it is a
good idea to come up with strong
KEYWORDS; some hypernyms (general)
and some hyponyms (specific)

Write down some hyponyms and
hypernyms that would be useful for your
compound.
How do I do that if I don’t know
anything about my topic?
Go to a general resource such as;
 A Directory or Portal on the topic
 Do a quick Google search…mine the results list
 Try Wikipedia
 Try an encyclopedia (on-line or hard copy)
 Or a book (search the index in the back)
This pre-searching will help!

Think about
words that are
examples of what
you want in a
PERFECT website
Think of searching as using a
zoom lens
Use more search terms to get fewer
but better quality results.
 Add more words and restrictions at
first.

Boolean Operators…the grammar
of search engines

AND
– Makes search more specific

OR
– Broadens your search

NOT
– Narrows your search by excluding some
words
An example using “AND” or +
Everyone stand up…
Remaining standing if…
 you are wearing blue jeans
 you are wearing blue jeans AND have blond
hair
 you are wearing blue jeans AND you have
blond hair AND are a girl.
 Do we get more or fewer results with AND?
How does it look in Google?
“blue jeans” AND “ blond hair” AND girl
Or
“blue jeans” +”blond hair” +girl
NO SPACE HERE
An example using OR
Stand up if
 You are wearing blue jeans.
 You are wearing blue jeans OR black
pants.
 You are wearing blue jeans OR black
pants OR running shoes.
 Do we get more or fewer using OR?
Symbolic “OR”
Google uses the vertical bar “|”
To get this symbol use Shift \
E.g. Honda OR Toyota
Honda | Toyota
What if we combine the two?
Stand up if…
you are wearing blue jeans OR black
pants AND running shoes
An example using NOT (-)
Stand up if
 You are wearing blue pants.
 You are wearing blue pants NOT jeans.
 You are wearing running shoes AND blue pants NOT jeans.
Do we get more or fewer results using NOT?
What does this one look like in
Google?
“running shoes” + “blue pants” -jeans
The ideal website is like one person in the
room…we should be able to create
keywords that select only that one great
site. You just have to know which terms to
use.
~ What does the “tilde” do?
Use this when you are not sure what
synonyms there are for keywords you are
using.
 E.g. “death penalty” OR “capital
punishment”
 ~”death penalty” - looks for synonyms

Summary of Boolean Operators

“AND” or + (hyponym)
– Limits your search; finds sites that has both terms
somewhere e.g. recipes +Japan +rice

“OR” (hypernym)
– Captures synonyms e.g. car or automobile
– Searches for any of the terms
“NOT” or – (hyponym)
 Eliminates possibilities that you suspect will
cause problems

E.g. Martin Luther NOT King
-Eagles –Philadelphia –football
What is a Search string?
It is a list of all of the search terms and
syntax (grammar) that focuses your
search and limits your results list.
 It will allow you to find websites again.
 It shows the thought process you went
through to find a website.

Say you are going to buy a dog
You love the Chihuahua breed.
 Before you buy, you want to investigate to
see if the breed has any big health issues.

What are the major health issues
affecting Chihuahuas?
1.
Use most important words first.
Dogs (too hypernymish!!!)
Chihuahua…oh but don’t capitalize it…that would be the city in
Mexico.
How many “hits” do you get?
To make sure there are no synonyms or variations…let’s use
the tilde~…it tells Google to get all synonyms.
~chihuahua
Now how many “hits” do you get?
What are the major health issues
affecting Chihuahuas?
2. Second most important word is…
Health…so ~chihuahua +health
How many hits do you get?
What are the major health issues
affecting Chihuahuas?
3. What if we think we might be interested
in Poodles as well?
Use OR…
~chihuahua OR poodle +health
Will this mean more or less hits?
What are the major health issues
affecting Chihuahuas?
4. Let’s be more specific. We don’t want
health. We want health problems.
Problems is vague, health is vague.
Together they are specific!
But use quotation marks!
~chihuahua OR poodle +”health
problems”
What are the major health issues
affecting Chihuahuas?
5. We decide we want to focus in on any genetic
health problems. We want any forms of the
word genetic.
~chihuahua OR poodle +”health problems”
+genetic
How many hits did you get now?
What are the major health issues
affecting Chihuahuas?
6. A lot of sites talk about “teacup” chihuahuas. We want the regular.
(This is called “mining the results list”.)
~chihuahua OR poodle +”health problems” +genetic
-teacup
Using the minus sign is how Google does the NOT command.
Make sure the - sign touches the word you want excluded.
How many hits did you get now?
What are the major health issues
affecting Chihuahuas?
7.
Some of the sites listed are trying to sell us a dog.
Let’s get rid of them.
~chihuahua OR poodle +”health problems” +genetic
-teacup -book -sale
Using the minus sign is how Google does the NOT
command. Make sure the - sign touches the word you
want excluded. Google always gives you
variations…the word “book” gives you book or books
How many hits did you get now?
8. Use the advanced search!
Other tricks to help our search
9. Use allintitle: intitle: allintext: intext: to make Google look for
keywords in website title or the text.
Maybe we want only information from or by breeders.
chihuahua +”health problems” +~genetic -teacup -book -sale
intitle:breeder
How many hits now?
Other tricks to help our search
10. Domains indicate the “nature” of the group that posted the
website. The best are .gov or .edu or k12. Some .org sites are
okay if the organization is a credible one.
Be skeptical of .com and .net…they are personal or commercial.
Add site:edu or exclude a type of site -site:com
Quality of domains
Other tricks to help our search
11. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is the site address.
http:// transfer protocol
www.website -name of website
.ca.edu -can include country and domain
/filename/subfilename
/filetype -could be ppt; pdf; doc
Analyze site URLs for certain phrases or words. Use inurl: or allinurl: to ask
for certain words in a URL.
inurl:ca
Other tricks to help our search
12. Find similar sites by using the link in Google
under good websites in the list of results.
Cached means old captured copies of the
site.
Other tricks to help our search
13. Use Google advanced drop down to search
for sites by date. Warning is that Google still
has trouble determining valuable dates (like
date sites posted or updated) from dates
minor changes were made.
Other tricks to help our search
14. Find out what other sites link to sites you
want to use by adding in another search
link: _____URL______ . The results list will
include every site that links to this site.
It is useful to browse this list to see if any
strange sites link to it.
Other tricks to help our search
15. Search by filetype if you want only one kind,
e.g. powerpoint presentations or pdf’s.
filetype:ppt or pdf or doc
16. Last of the tricks

Need articles? Add the word article
– (better yet go to one of the databases!)
Need pros and cons? Add “pros and
cons”
 Costs and benefits? Add “costs and
benefits”

17. *Wildcard* searching
Google offers proximity searching:
*Is a wildcard



To find a missing word in a phrase, simply
substitute an asterisk. For example, Coca-cola
was invented by * You can search for phrases with
or without quotation marks.
“Top 100 famous women *”
You can use as many asterisks in a search
phrase as you'd like. "Remember, remember the *
of *." You can also use more than one asterisk if
you'd like to have more than one wildcard in a
row. Put a space between each asterisk.
Here is the Search string…
What are the major health issues affecting
Chihuahuas?
~Chihuahuas
1,400,000
+health
1,130,000
+”health problems” 62,900
-mexico
44,600
-amazon
42,300
-~book
25,100
-sale
17,000
-site:com
451
Create your own search string

Create a search string for your compound:
Complete the sheet to show your search string and
results.
Play when you search…
The first thing you'd notice by watching
over the shoulder of professional
librarians:
 They don't search once, perfectly. They
search over and over, circling the prey.
 Remove one restriction at a time. (That's
the essence of troubleshooting.) Try being
more restrictive here, and less there. Then
try it the other way around.

Don't scroll: there's no
scrolling on the Web
If you turn up hundreds or thousands of
hits, scrolling through them is unlikely to
find the one you want.
 Better to refine your search.

Use what you learn
As you search, whenever you see a fact in
the results list or on a page, use it. Go
back to the search engine and throw that
fact onto the search.
 This is called “mining the search results
list”.
 Learn new facts to hypo your search and
learn what you can exclude

Can use the same techniques in
Databases

Databases - Library website

EBSCO

Knowledge Ontario
Are your sources good quality?