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Google is considered one of the most powerful search engines to search the free web.  Besides its main web searching capability, Google has grown a number of features for you to take advantage of including Image searching, Google Scholar (search of academic sources), Google News,

To view these features, check the links on the upper left corner on the main Goggle page including what's listed under "more":

Understanding your web search results:

Understanding how Google works helps you build effective searches.  So, here are some clues on how Google thinks:

1. Implicit AND- Google returns only pages that match all your search terms.

A search for [ compact fold-up bicycle ] finds pages containing the words “compact” and “fold-up” and “bicycle.” Because you don't need to include the word AND between your terms, this notation is called an implicit AND (similar to the Boolean AND).

The query [ child bicycle helmet ] finds pages that contain words that are similar to some or all of your search terms, e.g., “child,” “children,” or “children's,” “bicycle,” “bicycles,” “bicycle's,” “bicycling,” or “bicyclists,” and “helmet” or “helmets.” Google calls this feature word variations or automatic stemming ((similar to truncation!).

If you only want to search for pages that contain some term(s) exactly, precede each such term with a plus sign (+) or enclose more than one term in quotes (" ").

3.Term Proximity - Google favors results that have your search terms near each other.

Google considers the proximity of your search terms within a page. So the query [ snake grass ] finds pages about a plant of that name, while [ snake in the grass ] tends to emphasize pages about sneaky people. Although Google ignores the words “in” and “the,” (these are stop words), Google gives higher priority to pages in which “snake” and “grass” are separated by two words.

4. Term order - Google gives higher priority to pages that have the terms in the same order as in your query.

Consequently, you should enter search terms in the order in which you would expect to find them on the pages you're seeking. A search for [ New York library ] gives priority to pages about New York's libraries. While the query [ new library of York ] gives priority to pages about the new libraries in York.

Selecting domains, types of results:

Google allows you to target specific types of results by excluding or limiting them to specific domains (i.e., .org, .gov, .edu, etc)  using the expressions  -site:[domain] or even +site:[domain]. For example, if you  are doing research on the planet Mars and wish to exclude commercial web sites, you should type in:  Mars -site:.com.  In a similar example, if you want to get ONLY government web sites you should type in:  Mars +site:.gov.

Advanced searching in Google:

When you don’t find what you’re seeking, consider specifying more precisely what you want by using Google’s Advanced Search feature. Don’t be frightened by the name “Advanced Search”; it’s easy to use, and it allows you to select or exclude pages with more precision than Google’s standard search box. Click on the Advanced Search link at the right of Google’s search box.

As you can see, this "advanced search" feature guides you into building Boolean searches through the search boxes where you may type in your keywords:  "all these words" is your Boolean AND search;  "this exact wording or phrase" is your phrase search; "one or more of these words" is your Boolean OR search...

Note also that Google Advanced allows you to specify the type of web sites you wish to retrieve.  This is a very useful feature, especially if you wish to avoid commercial web sites. For example, under "Search within a site or domain" you may type in .org to limit your results to web pages from nonprofit organizations.

Under "Date Usage rights, numeric range, and more" you also have additional ways you may refine your search resulsy such as date or areas in your results where you want your keywords to appear  ("Where your keywords show up"):

* Most of the information and examples above come from Nancy Blachman 's Google Guide, www.googleguide.com. Visit Blachman's web site for additional information and search tips.

Below are just general tips you may keep in mind as you do your Web searches:

1.  Be specific. 
When you search the web, the more specific you are the better your chances to get the results you are looking for.  For example, if you wish to find how you can fix a running toilet, you should start your search by typing in: how to fix a running toilet

2.  Use the + symbol to add words.   

To make sure that a search engine finds pages that have all the words you type in, not just some of them, you may use the + symbol. Do not to leave a space after the + sign, but be sure to include a space before the "+" sign! 

NOTE:   Google is an example of a search engine in which the + sign is not necessary.

3. Use the - symbol to exclude.

Sometime you may wish to exclude a word from your search.  In this case you may use the minus (-) sign before the word.  Do not to leave a space after the "-" sign, but be sure to include a space before the "-" sign! 

4. Use quotations for phrases.

To search for an exact phrase, use "double quotation marks" around the phrase.

Note: Raging (or Alta Vista) does not require quotations for phrase searching - it first does phrase searching automatically.

5.  Be case sensitive!

In most search engines lower case letters are interpreted as either upper of lower case.  If you want to search for proper names or words in all upper case, make sure you type your words that way!