A Student Researcher's Guide to Google Searching: Home

This guide is designed to help students make the most of their Google searches. 

Click on the tabs above to access tools that will show you how to conduct more efficient and effective Google searches.

Essential Resources

The Best Google Search Cheat Sheet: Tips, Operators, and Commands to Know

This Make Use Of article lists many common operators, such as OR and quotation marks, that can be used to create more effective Google searches.

Google Help Page

A page offering "How to" guides that give instructions for customizing your Google searches. The page's "Tips for searching" section is particularly helpful.

Other Search Tools

Yahoo Directory - Unlike Google, Yahoo Directory contains websites that are indexed by humans and placed into categories. This can be a much more productive way of searching for information depending on what you're looking for.

DuckDuckGo - For users with privacy concerns, DuckDuckGo is a search engine that offers functionality similar to Google but has a no-tracking policy for users' searches. This search engine also avoids what is known as the filter bubble and, unlike Google, displays the same results for all users.