URI Librarian Amanda Izenstark created this excellent resource for tips on using Google's Advanced search function.  She provides simple yet effective tips, such as searching only specific websites e.g. .edu,  and even real examples of student success using Google Advanced.

Often the most important search strategy takes place before your fingers ever touch the keyboard.  This page offers some simple yet effective strategies for effective internet searching:

• Who would know?
• Use your searching skills.
• Know your Web search tool.
• Not everything is on the Internet.
  

Before you begin your search, think about where the information you are looking for would most likely be found. Who would be an authoritative source on the topic you are researching, or who would know the fact you are looking up? 

For example:

• What Web site might we go to for national election results?
• What Web site might we go to for the weather in Chicago?
• Who would know the bus schedule and bus fare between Providence and Boston?

If we had the questions above, we could go to a search engine like Google and type in “election results” or “weather and Chicago” or “bus and Providence and Boston.” We might be better off thinking about sites like CNN.com or Weather.com. For the bus schedule, we might need to search Google to learn that Peter Pan Bus Company runs buses between Providence and Boston. A search in a search engine for “Peter Pan Bus” is likely to be far more successful than a search for “bus and Providence and Boston.”

Here are some more examples to think about: 

• We want to know how many murders were committed in the United States last year. 
• We want to know what the business climate in Albuquerque, New Mexico is. 

These take a little more thought, and perhaps the advice of a librarian, but this information is likely to be gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. Again, if you know the organization you are searching for, you will have much better luck searching the Web than searching by the keywords of your topic. 

Here’s another way of thinking about it: When you search a library catalog by subject, you search for keywords from the title and subject of books. You are searching for a record of the actual document. You have no idea who the author might be. This works just fine. When you search the Web, however, you will have better luck if you can try to figure out who the “author” is first, then you can search a Web search engine by this “author” to find the “author’s” site. 

The extra time it takes to think through your search strategy will most likely pay off in the end. 

Take the time to identify the key concepts for the topic you are searching and come up with a list of possible synonyms. 

Example question:
“Does the death penalty disproportionately affect people of color?”.

Key concepts:
death penalty people of color

Synonyms:
death penalty people of color
execution
capital punishment Blacks
Latinos
minorities
African-Americans
race/racial

Don’t forget to check your spelling and make sure you don’t make any typographical errors when you enter your search terms.

We can compare Web search engines and directories to the Article Databases we have already looked at. Even though all the Article Databases do basically the same thing — they help us identify periodical articles and other materials on our topic — we saw how each one was different from the others. Not only did they have a different scope (they covered different subject areas, types of materials, and years), they all had a slightly different way of entering the search into the database. 

The same is true for Web search tools. As discussed previously, some of the differences between Web search tools are the following:

• Is the tool a directory, compiled by human beings, or is it a search engine compiled by a “spider” computer program?
• How big is the database of the search engine or directory? How many sites does it index?
• How frequently is the database updated? Are new sites being added on a regular basis? Is the information “fresh”?
• What does the search tool index? When you search, are you searching the full text of a web page, a description of a site, the title of the web page only, the title and first few paragraphs? Different search tools index different things. 
• Become familiar with the search language and advanced features of the search tool. For example:
• Does the tool allow for Boolean searching with AND, OR, and NOT? Some do and some don’t. Some let you use + and – to indicate that a particular word must/must not appear in the search results. 
• If you type in more than one word in a row, does the search tool automatically put and “AND” or an “OR” between the words? Another way of saying this is, does each site in your results list contain all of the words you typed in or either/any of the words? Does it allow phrase searching using quotes? 
• Is truncation possible? Some search tools allow you to add a character (such as + or *) to the end of a word to retrieve all possible variations (e.g. teach*). Some do not. If truncation is supported, what is the truncation character?
• Does it matter whether you use upper or lower case letters (e.g. Italy or italy)? Some search tools expect you to capitalize proper nouns. Others don’t care. 
• Can you limit your search? Some search tools allow you to limit your search to just the title of a Web page, to a particular web site or domain (e.g. “.org”), or even to the URL itself. It is also possible on certain sites to limit your results to specific media such as images or audio files. 
• How do the results of your search appear? What order are they in? Are they ranked by relevance? By popularity? By whether or not the site has paid for prominent placement? 

All of these factors will affect the outcome of your search. Understanding how to structure your search according to the characteristics of the search tool you are using will not only give you more control over your search and help you get better results, but will give you a better idea of what kind of information you are likely to find, as well as what information might be missed in your search. 

It is a good idea experiment with different Web search tools and pick your favorite 2 or 3. Then really get to know your favorites by reading the help screens and FAQ’s (Frequently-Asked Questions), checking out the advanced search features, and reading more about the search engine or directory at http://www.searchenginewatch.com/. 

The Internet contains a wealth of information, some of it high-quality, from reputable sources, and some of it low-quality, from questionable sources. The Internet is especially good for information in the public domain such as government statistics and publications, some information produced by researchers at universities, information provided by professional, trade, and special interest organizations, and information published by commercial enterprises that are willing to make it freely available in return for advertising revenue on their sites. 

There is a great deal of information, however, that is not freely available on the Internet. Some of this is proprietary information – information that might be available, but for a fee. Example of this are the Library’s many Reference Databases, some of which cost thousands of dollars per year to subscribe to; or information on sites like Hoovers.com, which provide company profiles for a charge; or full text books on sites like netLibrary, which again require a subscription or a purchase. One rule of thumb is that, if it costs money in print format, it probably costs money on the Web. Other information is simply not available, especially older information and copyrighted information. The text of most periodicals, whether newspapers, magazines, or scholarly journals is generally not freely available (with a number of exceptions). 

Furthermore, not all of the information that is available is easily accessible. No search engine indexes anywhere near all of the Web. What all of this means is that while the Internet can be an excellent place to conduct your research, do not rely on it exclusively, or you will miss a great deal of information.