IRIS 42: Information and Research Instruction Suite for two-year colleges

Tools for Modifying Your Search

Zoom in with these Features

Along with its special operators, Google provides tools to limit your searches.  Combine Google’s advanced operators with modifiers to create highly focused queries.  Here are some of the more useful ones:

Intitle

Limit your searches to words that are found only in the title.

google search shoeing using the intitle limiter, as in intitle:"genetically modified food"

Site

Restrict your returns to a specific domain. Note the use of the minus sign to keep results focused on the state of Washington and eliminate government sites related to George Washington and the District of Columbia.

google search demonstrating to use site: to limit the domain of your search. Example shows site:gov to limit to government sites.

Filetype

Limit your search to a particular file extension, such as .pdf, .jpg, .ppt, .doc, to name a few. This is useful if, for example, if you want to find a report with statistics.

google search demonstrating using the filetype limiter

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google search shoeing using the intitle limiter, as in intitle:"genetically modified food", there are no spaces between the semicolon and the terms google search demonstrating to use site: to limit the domain of your search. Example shows site:gov to limit to government sites google search demonstrting using the filetype limiter. Sample search is filetype:pdf teen smoking. There is no space between filetype and pdf