Search engines like Google, DuckDuckGo, or Bing can be a good resource for research when used effectively. There are many specific search techniques we can use with these tools to improve our search results:
Use Quotation Marks: Placing quotation marks around concepts we express with two or more words allows us to search for an exact phrase, with the words in the exact order we typed them, and therefore makes our searches more specific. For example: "Song of Solomon" instead of Song of Solomon, or "environmental justice" instead of environmental justice.
Exclude Certain Words: If there is a word we do not want in our search results, we can put a minus sign in front of that word to exclude it from search results. For example: apples -oranges.
Use Domain/Site Searching: Domain searching features allow us to limit our search results only to results from certain top-level domains like .com, .edu, .org, or .gov, while site searching allows us to search for information only within a specific website. To use domain searching, we can add the domain suffix to the end of our search: "urban agriculture" site:.edu. To use site searching, we add the website we want to search within to the end of our search: "urban agriculture" site:udc.edu.
Use Filters: Search engine results page often include filter options that can help limit our search results by type of source, date range, geography, and other features. For example, the results page for a DuckDuckGo search for "urban agriculture" DC gives us the option to narrow results to images, video, or news, as well as by geographic region and date:
Some search engines have Advanced Search pages or additional advanced search features that offer us many, many more ways to tailor our searches. The features vary somewhat by search engine.
DuckDuckGo Advanced Search Syntax
