When most of us want to find something on the web we simply go to google.com, type a phrase or question and hope that we get all of our answers on the first page. Unfortunately, that happens a LOT less than we’d like.

A LONG time ago, people used to memorize something called “boolean” expressions (OR, AND and NOT, for example)  to really find ‘exactly’ what they wanted but they were hard to remember. To help with this, Google built a very easy to use “Advanced” search tool.

First, here’s how to find it. You can visit the advanced search page directly at https://www.google.com/advanced_search or you can choose it from the main google search page (www.google.com)

  • Visit www.google.com
  • Select “Settings” in the lower right-hand corner of the page

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  • Select “Advanced Search”

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  • You will now find yourself at Google’s Advanced Search page, which looks like this:

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Ok, so now you’ve found the proper page, how do you use it? The good news, just read the descriptions next to each field and you’ll get a good idea on what text to enter. The real trick is to use a number of these fields to narrow down the very best results you can find on the internet. For example, doing a PBL on Eggplant but you’re tired of getting eggplant parmesan recipes?

try the following:w

  • In “All these words:” type “eggplant”
  • In “none of these words:” type “parmesan”
  • Click “Advanced Search” at the bottom.

The results are dramatically different. There are many uses for these advanced search options so give some of them a try!