Medicine Information Skills Tutorial

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That's correct!

No! Google default search is keywords.

Incorrect!

Incorrect.

Quick Quiz 1


QUICK QUIZ:
How can you search for a phrase in Google?
	by placing your search in quotation marks
	Google search phrase by default
	By placing your search terms inside parenthesis
	By putting a "plus" sign between each word

Wrong! Try again.

Correct! A plus sign will instruct Google to search for the term.

Quick Quiz 2


QUICK QUIZ:
What does putting a plus sign (+) before a word in a Google search do?
	A plus sign will search for synonyms of your term
	A plus sign makes sure a search term is included (Google will exclude common words from your search)
	A plus sign excludes the following term from your search
	A plus sign will search join words together for a phrase search

Why Google?

More Information

	Google Inc. :: Basics of Google search
	Google Inc. :: Advanced search made easy
	Internet.com :: Search Engine Watch

Since its launch in September 1998, Google has quickly gained a well-deserved reputation as one of the best search engines for finding relevant information. Traditional search engines based their retrieval system on looking at the occurences of searched terms in webpages. Google goes a step further to include a "weighting" system whereby webpages containing the searched terms that have more links to them will be listed at the top, compared to webpages that don't have as many links to them. They also give more "weighting" to who links to the sites retrieved from the search.

Basic search tips for Google

Incorrect! Try again.

CONTENTS of MODULE 6

6.1	Objectives
6.2	Search engines & web directories
6.3	Searching Google
6.4	Evaluating internet resources
6.5	Citing internet resources
6.6	Review

1. Keyword searching

2. Phrase Searching

Keyword searching can be done using either of the

Wrong! Try again.

following 3 methods:
- enter each term in the textbox, separated by a space
- place the plus sign (+) between each term

Keyword searching will retrieve documents containing all the terms entered for the search, in any order and any distance from each other.
Google - keyword search

Placing terms in inverted commas will search for them as a phrase. That is, all the terms have to appear in the order in which they were entered. eg. "bird flu" will search for documents that contain the word bird immediately preceding the word flu.

Exercise: Go to Google and perform: -
i. a keyword search for bird flu
ii. a phrase search using inverted commas "bird flu"
Q1. How many results are there from each search?
Q2. Why do you think there is a difference?

3. Advanced Search

4. Word Stemming

Google's Advanced Search allows you to limit your search by date, language and file format. You can also use it to perform basic keyword or phrase searching - the different textboxes and drop-down menu will guide you through the process.

Google searches for alternative word endings ("word stemming") eg. if you search for molecule it will search for the singular form as well as the plural form molecules.

5. Be specific in your search

6. More tips

As there is so much information available on the internet, enter as many keywords and/or phrases as you can to narrow your search.

Exercise: Go to Google and perform: -
i. a keyword search for bird flu diagnosis
ii. a combination of phrase and keyword search for "bird flu" OR "avian influenza" diagnosis
Q1. How many results are there from each search? NB: Sometimes it might not be appropriate to convert all your search terms into phrases eg. searching for the phrase "bird flu diagnosis" would exclude documents which use the phrase "diagnosis of bird flu". You could also try the search in http://ranking.thumbshots.com to see the comparison of results from the two searches.

The information above provides a basic outline for searching the internet using Google. If you would like to learn more, please go to Google help.

It is important that you evaluate your results to include only authoritative and scholarly information in your projects and assignments. Go to the next section for details about evaluating internet resources.