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Being smart isn't just about memorizing information.
It's also about being able to find the information you need.
For most of us, that first point of information retrieval is Google.
But, not every Google search is created equal.
I'm gonna show you some advanced features of Google search that'll help you pinpoint exactly what you're looking for.
The first thing to know is that Google actually has an Advanced Search page that they kinda hide over at google.com/advanced_search.
Now using that, you can search for exact phrases.
You can define subjects that are gonna be excluded from search.
You can even filter the results by language or by region, or even filter out explicit content.
For example, let's say we're looking for some Star Wars fan fiction that's written in German and available as a PDF and doesn't mention Jar Jar Bing's.
And for the sake of this video is not pornographic.
I'll put in fan fiction as the general search term and then star wars as a specific search term.
And then I'll say scooting jar jar, and I'm going to filter this by the German language.
Turn SafeSearch on and then select PDF as the file type.
Boom!
There's a lot of German Star Wars fan fiction that doesn't have Jar Jar Binks doing horrible things.
The great thing about searching this way is that you already have a template for how to structure your search.
It's great also, if you're looking for something pretty complicated, and you really want to define the parameters for your search.
Now, you can perform a pretty similar search right from the Google homepage, if you use some choice punctuation.
Google calls these search operators.
And, there's dozens of them out there.
But, I'm gonna talk about the ones that are the most useful.
Now, let's say you're looking for a specific phrase.
If you put it in quotation marks, Google will acknowledge the entire phrase instead of each individual word.
For example, if I want to search for people who are talking about the best donut they've ever had, I'll type the phrase this is the best donut I've ever had inside quotation marks, and Google will filter just the results that have those exact words in that exact order.
I see results here from twitter, and if I want to filter those out I can adjust the search by adding a dash or a minus sign in front of the word twitter.
Or let's say I want my results only from Twitter, I could adjust the search by adding site colon twitter.com, and then I've only got results with that phrase from Twitter.
Finally, a few quick tips.
Now Google is not only the most famous search engine in the world, it's also a great calculator.
It can even handle scientific calculations, it can also handle unit conversions.
If you wanna know how many ounces are in a gallon.
Just type it in, and you've got the answer.
If you want to define a word you can just type in define, colon, and the word you're looking for.
And for an easy way to pad your term paper with some impressive citations, you can go to scholar.google.com, and you're gonna get a searchable index of articles, and abstracts, and books, all from academic publishers.
So that's it, that's how to take your Google search skills up to the next level.
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