4 Quick tips for researchers to make Google

searches more effective

Enclosing two or more terms within double quotation marks makes searches more specific, as discussed

in an earlier article, because Google treats the matter thus enclosed as a single character string and

retrieves only those pages that have the enclosed terms in the same sequence. In other words,

rege eratio through ste ells, for i stance, looks for that specific phrase instead of pooling web

pages that have the three keywords, namely regeneration, stem, and cells, in any order. In this post, I

will provide some tips to make Google searches more effective.

1. Use Ver ati : At times, using double quotes is not good enough because some words may not be

searched for, or Google may decide to include synonyms as well. To force the search engine to do your

iddi g, tur to “ear h tools : li k o that ta that appears i ediatel u der the search box, choose

All results, a d li k o Ver ati .

2. S it h to pri ate ro si g: To customize your searches, Google takes into account your browsing

history, the device being used for the search, data from other Google services, and so on. This affects

the sear h results. To ru a sear h ot o strai ed these details, sear h i the pri ate ro si g ode usi g a ke oard short ut, a el trl + shift + p, hi h orks for oth Firefo a d I ter et

Explorer; if you are using Chrome, use ctrl + shift + n. You could also use Tools > Start private browsing in

Firefox, Safety > In Private Browsing in Internet Explorer, or Main menu > New incognito window in

Chrome.

3. Repeat a search term more than once: By typing a chosen term more than once (regeneration stem

cells stem cells, for example), you can get a different set of results.

4. Change the order of search terms: When terms are not enclosed in double quotes, the order in which

the terms are listed influences the results; stem cells regeneration, for instance, will fetch a different set

of links than regeneration stem cells.

I hope these tips help you in your web search. Happy searching!

You might also like to read How to use technology as a writing tool.