Google has a number of advanced search features which can make a search much more targeted.
Field searching:
- to search for a word in the title of your search results use the intitle: command followed by the search term
- for example - intitle:rhabdomyolysis
File type searching:
- Google has the option to search for results of a given file type. Many organisational reports and official documents are produced in PDF format so this can be a very good option for grey literature searching
- for example - rainfall data filetype:pdf
- you could also limit to -
- Word Documents .doc
- PowerPoint files .ppt,
- Excel Files .xls, xlsx
Domain searching:
- allows you to search specific domains or websites using Google
- there may be some websites which Google can't search in this manner. Check if you are getting results from desired sites
- the operator to search a site is site:
- is an easy way to search for government or educational sites. The default for a government site is to use .gov and this defaults to a US government site, to make it an Australian government site add au, e.g. site:gov.au
- allows you to search a specific website. For example - carbon footprint site:fao.org will search the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations website for the words carbon footprint
All of these operators can be mixed together as a search. For example - food security site:fao.org filetype:pdf