Google has a number of advanced search features which can make a search much more targeted. These features include searching by:
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, the most commonly used is PDF
- the command is the term filetype followed by a colon filetype: For example - rainfall data filetype:pdf
- includes -
- Word Documents .doc
- PowerPoint files .ppt,
- Excel Files .xls
- PDFs .pdf
Domain searching:
- allows a search across a website using Google
- will only work for websites in which Google can send spiders through to capture data
- the operator to search a site is site:
- is an easy way to search for sites with a government or educational institution extension. 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 website. Just add the site’s URL after the site search operator. For example - site:fao.org Add any search terms to this and you will search for the topic only in these web sites
All of these operators can be mixed together as a search. For example - food security site:fao.org filetype:pdf