Think you can Google
To book your places on the course contact the library team:
www.epsom-sthelier.nhs.uk/lis
E: [email protected]
T: 020 8296 2430
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Learning objectives
At the end of this session you should be able to:
 Identify when to use Google
 Interpret web addresses and evaluate websites for quality and reliability
 Formulate a search string, using basic Boolean logic
 Search using the Advanced Search facility including how to restrict searches e.g. by domain
 Search using Google Scholar to find free access journal articles, abstracts and citations
 Search using Google Book search to find free access e-books and book snippets
What is Google?
Google is recognised as the world's largest search engine; it is an easy-to-use free service that claims
to return results in a fraction of a second.
Google’s mission is to “organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”1.
Google uses the term ‘crawler’ to describe the electronic program they use to add websites to their
directory. This ‘crawler’ visits and reads a website, and takes a snapshot or ‘cache’2. When you enter
a search, Google scans these cached websites for a match to the words entered in your search query.
When should you use the Google?
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For general searching
When a quick answer is needed
When you want to check information or look for alternative perspective
When non-evidence based results are acceptable
Domain specific results e.g. NHS and government publications
To check your H-index (number of times that your publication is being cited)
Use Google Scholar to search grey literature when other well renowned sources are not
available n.b. Google Scholar is not 100% reliable to retrieve ALL results see “The Role of
Google Scholar in Evidence Reviews and Its Applicability to Grey Literature Searching”,
available at: http://bit.ly/2alTIqe
Assessing quality on the Internet
Interpreting web addresses
The ending of the URL indicates the origin of the site; this is known as the domain.
 National Health Service sites end .nhs.uk
 Government sites end .gov.uk
 Academic institutions end .ac.uk
 Registered organisations end .org.uk (e.g. charities, associations etc)
 Commercial organisations end .com or .co.uk
Evaluating the quality of a website
Unfortunately the quality and reliability of information retrieved by Google cannot be guaranteed. Think
about these points when you look at a website:
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Who put it there?
When did they put it there?
Is the information within the site current?
Why did they put it there?
From where did they get their information?
https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cache
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Planning your search
Before starting any search you should first decide exactly what you want to search for and from what
perspective. A useful method of doing this uses the acronym PICO3:
Patient, problem or population
Intervention
Comparison
Outcomes
Age, sex, race, condition or disease, care setting,
etc
Type of intervention e.g. test, therapy or clinical
procedure
Alternative interventions, if applicable
Measurement, result, effect
This will allow you to form your search strategy and give you keywords.
For example, if you are looking to find out whether black cohosh is effective in the management of
menopause, the keywords you would need to search for are black cohosh and menopause.
Conducting a General Search
To access Google:
1. Type the URL (or web address) in you web browser www.google.co.uk
Enter the term(s) in the search box. The search defaults and performs a Google Search.
The I’m Feeling Lucky button does not always appear by default but if it does you can use this button
to take you to the first search result returned for any search terms you enter into the box. For example
entering dialysis into the Google search box and clicking on I’m Feeling Lucky will take you straight to
the NHS Choices – Dialysis page (the first search result for that search term).
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PICO can be a helpful tool, but should not dictate your search.
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When conducting a search on Google, you use a combination of keywords. Google then searches for
these keywords anywhere in the text of websites stored in its cached database.
When keyword searching it is necessary to consider as many alternative terms and synonyms as you
can for your topic: e.g. cancer, neoplasms, carcinoma, etc
Search Tips
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To search for a phrase, type the phrase into the search box. For exact wording try putting the
phrase in quotation marks e.g. “smoking cessation” also use quotation marks to include all words
in a search e.g. “advice on how to give up smoking”
 Google is not case sensitive and will retrieve the same results whether you use capital letters or
lower case letters e.g. MMR or mmr
 Use the hyphen/dash to exclude words e.g. entering in aids –hearing in the search box will
exclude any pages with hearing aids written on it.
 Common Words. Google generally ignores common words such as; this, where, etc. If the
inclusion of a common word is essential for your search you can either prefix each ‘common’ word
with a plus sign (+)
Combining results
Google gives a number of options to combine your search terms to control the results you receive,
including the main Boolean operators:
 Boolean: The Boolean AND command is automatically applied in a Google search. Boolean OR
should be typed using capital letters, (or in lower case will be ignored). Boolean NOT is
represented by the minus sign/dash/hyphen “-" and should be placed in front of each word you
want to exclude.
 Singular/Plural: Google does not automatically search plurals, be specific in your search or use
the Boolean OR operator, e.g. child OR children
 Truncation. Truncation is used by a lot of databases to enable you to search for similar words, or
words with different spellings, e.g. nurse/nursing. Google does not recognise truncation, but will
automatically search similar terms (nurse/nursing). The Boolean OR operator can be used to
achieve specific truncation needs, for example when searching for both an American and English
spelling (paediatrics OR pediatrics).
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Limits
 You can restrict the domain of your results to ensure quality by typing your search term followed
by the word site, a colon (:)and the domain e.g. “health guidelines” site:nhs.uk
 An asterisk (*) symbol can be used as a wildcard or for any unknown terms when searching for a
phrase. The asterisk can be used to represent one or more words, for example ‘advice on * up
smoking’ instructs Google to find results that contain the word advice followed by one or two
words, followed by smoking. This could be ‘advice on how to give up smoking’ or ‘advice on
giving up smoking’
 Results containing a number range can be searched using two decimal points (..) This can be
used to specify a date range, for example the search ‘black death 1348..1350’ will retrieve results
containing the words black death and dates between 1348 and 1350.
 File type e.g. hand hygiene filetype:pdf will retrieve PDF results only.
Advanced search features
The search terms below allow advanced search features to be applied when searching using the
General Google search page.
inurl:
URL stands for Universal Resource Locator (URL); this is the web address e.g. the address for the
Department of Health is: www.dh.gov.uk. Enter inurl: followed by your search term, e.g.
inurl:depression (do not put a space between). Google will restrict the results to documents
containing depression in the URL. A search for inurl:depression exercise will return documents that
have ‘depression’ in the URL, and ‘exercise’ anywhere in the document.
define:
Type the word define followed by colon and your search term to retrieve a definition e.g. define:
depression
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Google Products
Select the
in the top right hand side of the Google screen followed by the More, then Even more
from Google.
The Google Products page should appear:
On this page you can see the various Google Products that Google has available including Video
search, Google News and more.
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Conducting an Advanced Search
You can access the Google Advanced Search option by selecting Settings at the bottom of the screen
and choosing Advanced Search from the menu that appears.
Alternatively you can type Google Advanced search in the search box or go directly to the advanced
search via: https://www.google.co.uk/advanced_search
The Advanced Search gives you the option to break down your search therefore giving you an easy
way to refine a query by filling in special fields or using a series of drop-down menus as shown below.
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Using the Boolean operators in the Google Advanced Search
Simply fill in the appropriate boxes
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All these words = AND
Any of these words = OR
None of these unwanted words = NOT
To search for a phrase use the “this exact wording or phrase” option
Use the guidance at to the right of the boxes to help you with your advanced search.
More tools are available to limit your search by;
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Language
Region
File type e.g. .pdf, .ps, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .rtf
Search within a site or domain e.g. only return results from a particular site or domain e.g. nhs
Terms appearing e.g. anywhere in the page, in the title of the page, in the links of the page
Google Scholar
Google Scholar can be used to search scholarly papers. You can access the Google Scholar search
page by selecting the
in the top right hand side of the Google screen, followed by more and even
more from Google hyperlinks as described above. You can also access Google Scholar directly via:
http://scholar.google.co.uk/
What publications are included in a Google Scholar Search?
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Full-text online articles and references from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint
repositories and scholarly articles posted on the web
Articles and book citations
What type of resources are you likely to retrieve?
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Full text if freely available or provided with the permission of the publisher
Citation or abstract
The Cited by… link enables you to view other papers that cite (or reference) the retrieved
paper. Cited by… indicates how many times the work of one author has been cited (referred to)
by other authors and also in what publications. It is believed that the number of times a paper
has been cited can indicate the worth of the paper.
To perform a Google Scholar Advanced search click on the drop down arrow to the right of the search
box:
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The Advanced Search page is laid out similarly to the Google Advanced page, using search boxes and
drop down arrows to combine search terms.
You can also;
 Enter a date range if necessary
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Your results will be displayed similarly to a Google Web search. Under each result you will see
some or all of the following options; from which you can redirect your search.
Cited by…
Related Articles
Cite
Save
More (click on this
to reveal cached
options)
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In some cases there will be the option to enter your Epsom and St Helier OpenAthens Username and
Password; however full-text will only be available if the article is included in either locally, regionally or
nationally purchased e-journals. Epsom and St Helier Library and Information Services will soon be
making our collection available via Google Scholar.
Google Books Search
Google Books Search is a search facility that allows you to search the full text of books that have
been scanned and entered to Google’s Book Database
To access the Google Books search page select the
in the top right hand side of the Google
screen, followed by more and even more from Google hyperlinks as described above. You can also
access Google Books directly via: https://books.google.co.uk
What publications are included in Google Books Search?
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Publisher-supplied publications
Work submitted by authors of self-published and out-of-print publications
Publications supplied by selected libraries (Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, Oxford
(Bodleian project) – mostly public domain titles [titles for which the copyright has expired]
Some articles
What type of result are you likely to retrieve?
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Scanned full text to search and browse
Printable pages or images
Snippets or excerpts of copyright books (where full text is not permitted by publishers)
Copy of the table of contents and index
Links to publishers, bookshops and ‘Find in a Library’
Search Tips
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Intitle: e.g. use intitle to search for words in the title e.g. intitle:Anatomy
Use Google Books Advanced Book Search
Google Books Advanced Book Search
To conduct a Google Book Advanced Search go to: https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search
This screen is similar to the Web Advanced Search and to the Scholar Advanced Search. Enter the
keywords for your search into the appropriate boxes and select any search limits as appropriate.
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More help with searching Google
To view videos about how to search Google more effectively select Settings at the bottom of the
Google home screen followed by Search help.
The Search Help Center screen should appear:
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On this screen select the
next to each heading to expand them e.g. under Image Search you can
find out how to perform a Reverse image search where you use a picture as your search to find
related images from around the web. Under Filter and refine your results you can choose the Find
free-to-use images options to filter your search so you only find images that are freely available to
use.
Google’s limitations
When searching Google, including Google Scholar and Google Book Search you must be aware of
the limitations.
 Do not expect the same quality of resources retrieved when searching medical databases such as
Medline and Embase.
 Be aware of sponsored results and advertising.
 The list of results displayed when you have conducted a Google search is ranked according the
number of links that reference the specific page. Be aware that the list of results is not ranked
according to the relevance of the webpage to your search.
 It is important to remember that Google does not use the same cataloguing techniques that you
will find when searching medical databases such as Medline and Embase, for example Medical
Subject Headings (MeSH). The search you run using Google is reliant on the Keywords you enter
into the search box.
 The large number of results retrieved when you conduct a search is a limitation. It would be
impossible to browse through the 100,000+ results Google may retrieve, use the Refine limit if
present, or use the Advanced Search features to construct a search strategy that will retrieve
less, but more relevant results.
For further information about Google please see:
 Google’s About pages give you information about how to search, what services are available
through Google and some information about how Google works
http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about.html
 Googleguide is an interactive Google tutorial which allows you to explore Google’s capabilities
http://www.googleguide.com/
 The Google Scholar About page gives information on what is available through a Scholar
search, plus search tips http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html
 The Google Books Search Help Centre contains advice on how to conduct a Book Search
http://books.google.com/support/?hl=en_GB
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