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POLI SCI 109B: The Politics of Public Policy: Google Tools

Google Search Tips, Tricks and Hacks

One of the largest hurdles of using Google is the amount you must weed through.  Some searches result in thousands of pages; who has time to go through all that?  You don't need to.  Did you know you can manipulate a regular Google search with a couple hacks to your search?  Its true!  Try these search hacks during your next google search.

  • site:XXXXX  This search tells google to limit your search to a particular site or domain.  For instance, if you limit to site:berkeley.edu you would only search the Berkeley site.  Similarly site:.gov would search only sites ending in .gov, and site:.edu would search only sites ending in .edu.
  • -XXXXX  Adding a minus/hyphen sign "-" to a term will remove results with that term.  This can be very helpfull when removing common words associated with your topic.
  • filetype:XXXX  Using filetype: will only find certain file extentions (.doc, .pdf, .ppt, etc)
  • "XXX XXXX" Putting double quotes around a phrase will find only that phrase.

You can also combine some of these search hacks, such as adding -site:nytimes.com to remove results from the New York Times website.  More search tricks can be found in the Library's Google Search Guide

Google Scholar Preferences

Google Scholar is an easy way to do interdisciplinary research, and with some settings changes can become even more useful.  You need a Google account to use some of these features.  To make Google display links to full text of articles that Berkeley subscribes to: Open Scholar and click on the3 bar menu, also called the "hamburger" menu in the upper corner, then click Settings, then click Library Links. Once in Library Links, enter the word Berkeley and click search (if you are connected to the internet via the campus, Google Scholar will have the correct boxes selected for you).  In the list of options that appears, check the boxes for

  • Open WorldCat - Library Search
  • University of California Berkeley - Get it at UC
  • University of California Berkeley - ProQuest FullText 

If you see UC e-links, ignore this as it will go away by Nov 2021.  Click save and then you can start searching.