Search Smart

Google is smart. Like really, really smart. There are ways of using Google that are also smart when you are trying to get the right information, not lots of information. Think about your keyword list, we are going to use it here. Now we'll get even smarter when searching Google by…

• Using speech marks to look for a phrase or words appearing in an exact order like “secondary school uniform” (this is really lots of adverts by companies that make school uniforms)
• Limiting your results to a particular domain like “secondary school uniform” site:gov.uk, site.ac.uk or site:org (getting better- we now have information directly from schools)
• Searching within a date period like “secondary school uniform” 2018..2020 (even better, we are now getting a mix of results from media outlets and schools)
• Searching for related sites like "secondary school uniforms" www.bbc.co.uk/news (now we know we are getting results from a high quality and trustworthy news outlet)

We have done these searches for you this time so you can see how different the results are, try a different word combination for yourself.

Use these in conjunction to create a search string. So, if you’re looking for information about artificial intelligence and would like to restrict your search to government sites/reports between 2019 and 2020, try typing in:

“artificial intelligence” site:gov.uk 2019..2020

This video explains how to use these hacks to get what you really need from Google The University of Cardiff’s Google search tips

There is a whole other Google you may not have heard of: Google Scholar. It works like regular Google, looking through results and returning the ones it thinks are closest to what you typed in, but Google Scholar searches books and journals that have been written by academics. Try using the same terms in this box, that we have handily put here so you can try Google Scholar:

And here's a quick video to explain what you can do with Google Scholar...