Day 399 || google better 2

Good morning sunshine!

Hope today is magic for you.

Today's (and tomorrow's) episode references: https://time.com/4116259/google-search-2/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/11/02/expert-tips-for-google-search/4113013002/

MEDIA BIAS CHART EXPLANATION: https://adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sources/

https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating-methods

1. Language is important. You don’t want to write when did such and such start if you really want to know when something was founded vs. established, or published vs. written. Figure out what you REALLY, specifically are looking to find out, and choose the appropriate (but fewest possible) words to get you there.

2. Don’t lead the witness. When asking a question, google for the answer don’t ask if your answer is right - you may just find other people who agreed with you confidently enough to publish a website but not enough to figure out you’re both incorrect.

3. Use quotation marks to get results with those exact key word phrases included in the results. Choosing and putting quotes around important contextual words can help get you more useful results, more efficiently.

According to USA Today article, Google’s advice is to add or remove words in your query to see different results, starting out with a broad search and narrowing it down as you go.

The word order matters in your searches, so try one way then the other if you’re not getting the results you want.

4. In addition to quotation marks, you can also add - minus sign to your search to remove things you don’t want to see in the results. Like if you’re looking for a new car but don’t want a certain type, you can put -convertible so you don’t have to see convertibles show up in your results. There needs to be a space before the minus sign and then not before the word you’d like to exclude. The opposite is true for the + plus sign to ensure anything you add after MUST be included in the search results. Similar to the “quotation mark” strategy but this one is more for single keywords.

5. You can also use an asterisk * if you forget a word in a quote or a common sentence that is essential for the search.

6. I am personally a huge fan of image search. I find a lot of things I need, like resume examples, quotes, scripts, etc. are created in PDF or visual form and you don’t have to scroll through all the various webpages seeing if the information you want even exists. Just scroll through images quickly to see if it’s there.

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