College v2

As a continuation of the Google Search series for college students, today we’re going to look at some methods of advanced searching. This means conducting searches using the Google Web Search function more in-depth, by utilizing special features and advanced search operators. Mastering these search methods will not only help you find whatever you’re looking for, whether it’s for a paper, homework assignment, or just your own curiosity.
There are two different kinds of advanced searching methods on Google. The first would be using the Advanced Search page, which is located at http://www.google.com/advanced_search. The second way to conduct an advanced search is through the use of search operators, or words that have a special meaning to Google. Please follow the links below for further information about each advanced searching method.

The Advanced Search Page:
Through a series of drop-down menus and specifying search terms on the Advanced Search page, you can limit your search in the following ways:

• Find the results “with all of the words”, “with the exact phrase”, “with at least one of the words”, or “without the words”.
• Limit your search results to specific languages.
• Specify what file format you do or don’t want your search results to be returned in.
• Select to return web pages updated within specified time periods.
• Select to return web pages with certain usage rights: “not filtered by license”, “free to use or share”, “free to use or share even commercially”, “free to use share or modify”, or “free to use share or modify even commercially”.
• Set filtering to “no filtering”, “moderate filtering”, or “strict filtering”. Filtering will eliminate adult sites from your search results.
• Conduct site specific searches.
• Find links that link to specific pages.
• Conduct topic-specific searches with Google Print, Google Scholar, Apple Macintosh, BSD Unix, Linux, Microsoft, U.S. Government, and University.

Advanced Search Operators:

Most of the searches that you can conduct on the advanced search page can also be done in the regular Google web search by using advanced search operators. Your query may include special operators in the form of operator:value. Please note that the colon between the operator and search term is required.
Please see the chart below for a list of search operators and their uses.
allinanchor:
Limits results to pages that contain all the search terms you specify in the anchor text on links to the page. Anchor text is text that is linked to another page or a different spot on the current page.
allintext:
Limits results to pages containing your specified search terms in the text of a page only.
allintitle:
Limits search results to pages containing your specified search terms in the title of a page only. In News search, this operator will limit results to articles with your terms in the title. In Image search, this operator will limit results to those with your search terms in the file name.
allinurl:
Limits results to those with your specified search terms in the URL only. In News search, allinurl: will return articles with your search terms in the title.
author:
When used this will restrict Google Groups results to include newsgroup articles by the author you specify.
bphonebook:
Shows you business white page listings for the term you specified.
cache:
Shows you Google’s cached version of a web page (from the last time they crawled the site) instead of the current version. On cached pages, you will see your search terms highlighted in yellow.
define:
Shows you definitions from various websites for the search term you provided.
ext:
Works the same way as the filetype: operator.
filetype:
Restricts your results to specific file types, e.g. pdf, doc, html.
group:
Restricts results in Google Groups to specific groups or subareas.
id:
Works the same as the info: operator.
inanchor:
Limits results to pages containing the search terms you specify in the anchor or links to the page.
E.g. – dogs inanchor: Dalmatians will return pages in which the anchor text on links to the pages that contain the word “Dalmatians” and the page contains the word “dogs.”
info:
info:url will return information about the specified web page.
insubject:
Limits articles in Google Groups to those that contain your search terms in the subject.

intext:
Limits results to those with your search terms in the text.
intitle:
Limits results to those with your search terms in the title.
dogs intext:dalmatians will return result pages for “dogs” that also have “Dalmatians” in the text.
inurl:
Limits results to those with your search term in the url.
dogs inurl:Dalmatians will return results for dogs that have Dalmatians in the url.
link:
Shows pages that link to the specified URL.
location:
If included in your search on News, results will be returned only for the location you specify.
movie:
Returns results with movie-related information such showtimes (if you include a zip code), reviews, and more.
msgid:
Limits results in Google Groups to a newsgroup article with the specified message ID.
phonebook:
Shows all white pages listings for the search term you specified.
related:
Returns pages similar to the one you specify.
E.g. – related:www.mp3s.com will show you sites similar to mp3s.com.
rphonebook:
Shows residential white page listings for the search terms you specified.
safesearch:
Excluses adult sites from your search results
site:
Limits search results to the website you specify.
source:
Limits results in Google News to the news source with the ID you specify.
stocks:
The operator stocks: with a company’s ticker symbol will return stock information for the particular company.
store:
Limits results in Froogle to a specific store.
weather
Typing weather and a location will give you the weather for that location. In this case, the colon is not needed after weather.