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week 6
google search tips| google features
Google Search Tips
Searching google is easy, just type whatever comes to mind in the search box, hit Enter or click the Search button, and Google will search the web for content that's relevant to your search. If you have Google Instant enabled, results may appear dynamically as you type. A basic search result will include a title that links to the webpage, a short description or an actual excerpt from the webpage, and the page's URL.
Most of the time, you'll find exactly what you're looking for with just a basic query (the word or phrase you search for). However, the following tips can help you make the most of your searches. To narrow your search you can use square brackets [ ] to signal a search query.
Some basic facts
• All the words you put in the search query will be used.
• Each search is case insensitive.
• No need for punctuation.
Tips for better searches
• Keep it simple.
• Web pages are not human, use nouns(or subjects).
• Minimize or elminate long descriptions.
• Choose descriptive words for relevant searches. For example, [ celebrity awards] is more descriptive and specific than [ awards ].
Basic simple search is often enough. As always, we use square brackets [ ] to denote queries, so [ to be or not to be ] is an example of a query; [ to be ] or [ not to be ] are two examples of queries.
• Phrase search ("")
By putting quotes around a set of words or phrase, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order.
• Search within a specific website :
Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query [ Mt. St. Helen's site:latimes.com ] will return pages about Mount St. Helen but only from latimes.com.
• Terms you want to exclude (-)
Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results.
• Fill in the blanks (*)
The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches.
• Search exactly as is (+)
Google employs synonyms automatically, by attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don't add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it. Putting double quotes around a single word will do the same thing.
• The OR operator
Google's default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type 'OR' in ALL CAPS).
Google Features
With Google Site Search, you can create a search engine for your organization's websites in just a few minutes. Key features include:
New! On-Demand Indexing
On-Demand Indexing lets you get a select number of pages on your website indexed quickly.
Enhanced Index Coverage ensures comprehensive search results on any website by crawling and indexing more content, even for pages deep within a site.
Please note that purchasing Google Site Search won't influence the ranking of your pages on Google.com search results or how many pages are indexed.
Synonyms
Enable visitors find documents with related terms without having to issue multiple queries. You can easily upload synonym dictionaries specific to your website. For example, (a search for [car] will now include [cars]). You can easily upload a custom synonym dictionary (a search for [fd] would include [fixed deposits] in search results).
Date Biasing
From now on, administrators can influence their search ranking based on the age of the documents (e.g., a recent product datasheet is weighted more heavily than older product documents). This feature can also be disabled and administrators can decide the level of influence for their sites (low, medium, high or maximum).
Top Results Biasing
Google Site Search allows you to target the top search results from specific sections of your website (such as your product catalog).
Additional Features
• XML search results
• Ad-free results
• Refinements
• Subscribed links
• Multiple languages
xml feed
XML feed of search results: you can choose to further customize the format of search results and integrate results into applications by using the in XML API. The XML API enables you to access the raw search results for your query in XML format, including the URL and description text. Learn more about the XML API.
ad-free
Ad-free search results With Google Site Search, ads are not included alongside your search results, so searchers will be more likely to stay on your website.
refinements
Make refinements to help categorize search results. Refinements are labels that you apply to websites. They appear as a list of links above search results, offering users a way to narrow their search. When a user clicks a refinement label, the sites that you have tagged with that label are given priority in the results. In addition to labeling sites, you can also specify additional words that can be added to users' queries when they click a label, providing even more targeted results.
Subscribed links With the subscribed links feature, you can place links above your search results for search queries of your choice. Promote an event, discount or document to your users. Basic Reporting Reports allow you to see how often people search with your search engine, and what people are searching for.
Multiple language support for your search results. You can specify the language for your Google Site Search Engine. The language setting will be used to set the language of the text on the search results page as well as giving preference to results in that language. You can also specify "All Languages," in which case the language associated with the user's browser will be used.
Supported languages include the following: Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish