Time Management Tip: Efficient Internet Searches

Posted by Jan Wencel on Tue, Feb 23, 2010

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When you’re experiencing time pressure, you should ask yourself two questions: 1) Should I really be doing this activity? 2) If so, how can I do it more efficiently?

Let’s see how this might play out when applied to the activity of conducting searches on the Internet.

First off: should I really be doing this activity? We all know the Internet can consume time at a staggering rate. Many of us default to searching the Internet & checking email messages because it provides a delightful distraction from the work we may not want to complete. For the purposes of this exercise, however, let’s assume the search activity is not only necessary, but planned with a start & finish time on the calendar.

Okay, so now how do we make searching more efficient? You probably have learned to include more terms to yield better results, but there’s so much more you can do. Let’s review a few of the advanced search tips Google provides to see how to take your searching skills to a higher level.

USE OPERATORS

Operators are symbols representing set processes to be performed. You likely already use the operator “ ” when you’re looking for an exact phrase. Did you know there are over 30 more operators Google recognizes? Following are a few:

Operator	Process to be performed	Example
[word] site:[url]	Search within only one website	wine glasses site:www.apartmenttherapy.com (Search ApartmentTherapy site for wine glass references)
[word] date:[#]	Search only a range of months (3, 6 or 12)	“lasalle bank” chicago date:3 (Find references with both the phrase LaSalle Bank & Chicago)
[#] % of [#]	Calculates percentage of number	45% of 39 (Calculate 45% of 39)
filetype:[ext]	Search for only particular file types (pdf, xls, ppt, doc, etc.)	2007 west virginia football schedule filetype:pdf (Find PDF of 2007 WV football schedule)
[Shipping Code]	Report activity on package shipped via UPS/USPS/FedEx	“999999999999” (Report latest info on FedEx package)
[word] -[word]	Search for results with first word, but don’t return results if second word is present	chicago baseball -cubs -sox (Find results for Chicago Baseball but not results that have the word Sox or Cubs in them)

DOWNLOAD A GOOGLE CHEAT SHEET

Until you commit these search efficiency techniques to memory, download this cheat sheet covering some of the tips in this newsletter plus many more. (Isn’t Google just the best?!)

MORE SEARCH TIPS

Thanks to Jeri Dansky, an organizer & blogger extraordinaire, who directed us to her seven internet research recommendations in response to this post. What techniques do you use?

Tags: habits, time management

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