Newcastle University

"Are you feeling lucky?"

Google's famous Search option is often uncannily accurate, but it's usually useful to be much more directive about the way your searches are carried out.

You may know that:

• Google is not case-dependent (Nelson = nelson).
  
• Horatio Nelson means "show me any pages which contain Horatio OR Nelson.
• Horatio +Nelson means "show me only pages which contain Horatio AND Nelson".
• "Horatio Nelson" (enclosed in quotes) means "show me only the pages which contain the two words Horatio AND Nelson, exactly like that".
• "horatio nelson" -"lady hamilton" (check the use of quotes in this search) means "show me only the pages about Horatio Nelson, but do not contain mention of Lady Hamilton.".
• You can ask Google to define: anything and also to do calculations. For example 'define: nelson', '1537/43*3.142765'

The above are the simplest, and possibly the most useful guidelines to know. We're not going to tell you any more here: go to Google's own advice – note the more advanced options at the left of that page.

Know that Google offer many more search services, oriented for specialist areas of science, academia, or other uses (e.g. Apple Mac users). Explore their sites.

Caveat

Know also that as Google expands, exponentially, into the commercial sector, the interest in whatever you type in also expands. Nothing is free: like all commercial Internet service providers, Google harvest everything. Your searches aren't too important, perhaps, but your files in Google Docs (as just one example) are also just so much grist to the mill 1.

1 Ask Google what "grist to the mill" means!