Google Advanced search techniques
1. You can complete an advanced search in Google Advanced Search, which helps narrow or refine your search for better, more specific results.
2. Narrow your results to one particular domain type, by adding site: and a domain name to your search terms.
- Looking for an educational site - genetic engineering site:edu
- Looking for a government site - genetic engineering site:gov
- To restrict your search to Australian websites, add '.au' - genetic engineering site:edu.au
3 letter Domain names
- gov - Government
- go - some countries such as Indonesia use .go only
- edu - Educational
- org - Organizations (nonprofit)
- mil - Military
- com - commercial
- net - Network organizations
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2 letter Domain names for country of origin
- au - Australia
- uk - United Kingdom
- cn - China
- in - India
- id - Indonesia
A complete list can be found on the CIA World Factbook
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3. Use 'Ctrl F' (Control + Find) to search for particular terms easily in a long document, whether from a website or a database article.
4. Use a Google command to limit results to the MOST RECENT: After you get your results, choose the Google Menu Bar, and choose 'Tools'. Then on the far left, at the drop-down menu next to 'Any Time', .you can choose 'Within the last year' (or less, if you prefer), but generally, you can choose 'Custom Range' at the bottom, as often the last 3 to 5 years would be sufficient for a recent search.

5. Use Boolean searching
- Use double inverted commas ("...") to enclose a phrase eg "plastic pollution". This command forces Google to return results where these 2 words are exactly side by side.
- Use AND to limit your results: A search for this phrase - Australian AND Indonesian "plastic pollution" will force Google to return results where both Australian and Indonesian plastic pollution is mentioned in the same article.
- Use NOT to limit your results (in a different way): A search for this - "plastic pollution" NOT marine - will force Google to return results about plastic pollution which do not include anything related to the ocean.
- Use OR to expand your results: A search for this - global OR worldwide "plastic pollution" - will force Google to return results for global as well as its synonym worldwide.
- Use filetype:pdf to search in Google for only pdf articles - "plastic pollution" filetype:pdf - will force Google to return results on plastic pollution which are only pdf articles (PDFs are great sources sometimes deeply buried in Google results and remain unseen).