Online search basics

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When searching for information online, you may need to vary your search depending on the source you are searching. For instance, many major search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo!) find results with any of the words you enter by default, and do not use Boolean operators. More specialized databases, such as those accessed through a library search, may follow search engine parameters, or may require Boolean operators for effective searching. It's a good idea to check the site for help or instructions about its search mechanism. However, you may be able to quickly test the following common tricks to see if they help you find what you are looking for.

Many search engines or databases have advanced search screens which allow you to easily customize your search. However, you can often include some of the same search features more quickly from the default search bar, as described below.

Note: The Knowledge Base search does not permit most of the techniques described below; see Knowledge Base search help.

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Excluding terms

You can exclude terms for many search engines by putting a hyphen in front of the words you don't want to appear in the results. For example, if you wish to search for stones but not for The Rolling Stones, enter the following search phrase:

stones -rolling

This search will find pages about stones, but will eliminate pages containing the word "rolling".

Limiting by searching for phrases

Many search engines will allow you to group words together using quotation marks. For example, to find results about the fairy tale The Golden Key rather than about organizations or businesses that use "Golden Key" in their names, try:

"the golden key"

This search allows you to include the word "the" in the exact phrase you are searching on, even though search algorithms typically ignore very common words such as "the".

Limiting by domain

You can narrow your search by telling the search engine to fetch only links that come from a particular domain or a single site. For example, if you're trying to find information about fine arts programs at universities, you could search on "fine arts", appending site:edu to your search, thereby weeding out all the commercial sites that would otherwise match your request. You can also search for all the occurrences of "fine arts" within a particular site, e.g., "fine arts" site:indiana.edu .

For a complete list of top-level domains (e.g., .com, .net, .uk), see the IANA Root Zone Database.

Boolean searching

A Boolean search is a sophisticated search, often used to retrieve information from large databases. Following are a few of the more relevant Boolean operators and their meanings:

OR: The search results contain records with one or more of the search strings.
AND: The search results contain only records that have all the search strings.
NOT: The search excludes records containing the search string.
NOR: The search excludes records containing any of the search strings.

Nesting, a search technique used in conjunction with Boolean operators, allows you to group search strings within parentheses. It allows you to construct very complex search strings, thereby increasing the precision of your searches.

Truncation

Truncation enables you to retrieve records containing various forms of a word by replacing parts of the word with symbols, thereby increasing your results. Accepted truncation symbols vary among databases; see What is a wildcard, and how can I use it?

More information

For more information, visit the Indiana University Information Commons/Undergraduate Library Services' Basic Database Searching Techniques. This site provides examples of Boolean searches, including the use of nesting and truncation, and features Venn diagrams that demonstrate how the searches work.

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Last modified on August 07, 2009.