GOOGLE Cheat Sheet of Tips & Tricks: How To Use Google To Study

Almost every college student uses Google on a daily basis, and most think their Googling skills are pretty good too. However, a recent study revealed that 3 out of 4 students don’t know how to perform an effective Google search. When your final grade depends on the term paper you’re stressing over, using Google with maximum efficiency is imperative. But so many students aren’t aware that they don’t know how to Google.

For those who have never taken the time to learn the ins and outs of Google, fear not. The following is a helpful cheat sheet of tips and tricks that will increase your search productivity:

“example” searches for the exact phrase in the quotation marks

~example                        searches the term and words related to the term

-example                         excludes the term from search results

*example                        replaces itself with common terms in your search

filetype:pdf                     searches only results of the specified file type 

site:www.example.com searches only the pages of the specified site

intitle:example                displays only results that have the term in the title

author:example              searches only articles/papers by the specified author

####..####                     searches within a range of numbers/dates

Be sure to make the above commands part of your repertoire when searching for information on the web. You’ll soon notice that you get better Google results while finding them a lot quicker. However, don’t forget about the various other resources at your disposal, including your school library and online databases.