{"id":64102,"date":"2011-06-16T09:11:30","date_gmt":"2011-06-16T08:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uk.cision.com\/?p=2857"},"modified":"2021-12-09T09:54:34","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T08:54:34","slug":"handy-googleing-hints-for-journalists-and-prs-improve-your-search-efficiency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/handy-googleing-hints-for-journalists-and-prs-improve-your-search-efficiency\/","title":{"rendered":"Google hints for journalists and PRs: improve your search efficiency"},"content":{"rendered":"

With an estimated\u00a0400 million searches<\/a> conducted every day, Google is the world\u2019s most widely used search engine database<\/a>. Current estimates of how many pages Google indexes range between 25 and more than 100 billion pages<\/a> \u2013 impressive,\u00a0although even Google doesn\u2019t cover the entire Internet.<\/p>\n

Google ranks<\/a> these pages for importance and relevance in an algorithm that weighs hundreds of variables<\/a> that address the content and meta-content of each individual page and the networked environment in which it exists.<\/p>\n

The quickest and most common way to search Google is to conduct a basic keyword search, which will return results based on this ranking system. Sometimes, however, this type of search is not an efficient route to the most relevant results.<\/p>\n

Below are a number of features that can be used to improve results, using either \u201coperators\u201d or \u201csymbols\u201d, illustrated with searches for Ruth Prickett, founding editor of Illustration<\/a> and formerly of Financial Management Magazine.<\/p>\n

Operators<\/strong> can be used to restrict searches to particular sections of web pages:<\/p>\n

intitle:<\/a> searching by intitle will search only the titles of web pages<\/p>\n

allintitle:<\/a> finds pages where unrelated terms make up the title of the web page.<\/p>\n

Inurl:<\/a> restricts the search to the web pages URL.<\/p>\n

allinurl:<\/a> finds pages where unrelated terms make up the title of the web page.<\/p>\n

Site:<\/a> allows you to search for keywords from one particular site<\/p>\n

Define:<\/a> provides a definition of the term that you have entered. This can be used to get the definitions of words, phrases, and acronyms.<\/p>\n

filetype:<\/a> can search for specific file formats including<\/p>\n

Symbols<\/strong> can be used to expand or condense search results:<\/p>\n

* \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The asterisk is known as the standard wildcard symbol. It can be used in the place of unknown words<\/p>\n

~\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The tilde<\/a> searches for words similar to any other words it has been pared with<\/p>\n

..\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Using two full stops<\/a> will search between a numeric range, this is particularly useful for searching within a date or \u00a0 price range<\/p>\n

+\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The plus <\/a>symbol can be used if a particular word must be included in the search results<\/p>\n

–\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The minus<\/a> symbol can be used if a particular word should not be included in the search results<\/p>\n

These are just some of the Google features Cision Researchers apply every day to improve search results relevance and overall search efficiency. Of course there are many more features available, which you\u2019ll find listed at the\u00a0Google Guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t forget that Google is only one of the many search engines readily available \u2013 Cision Research frequently use additional search engines for particular tasks: for example, people search engines, such as\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>,\u00a0TinEye<\/a> and\u00a0KGB People<\/a>, multimedia search engines, such as\u00a0YouTube<\/a>, Metacafe<\/a> and\u00a0Musgle<\/a>, and of course Google\u2019s competitors, most notably\u00a0Bing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Using a combination of the above search methods will improve the validity, relevance and accuracy of the returned results whatever search engine you use. Happy searching!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With an estimated\u00a0400 million searches conducted every day, Google is the world\u2019s most widely used search engine database. Current estimates of how many pages Google indexes range between 25 and more than 100 billion pages …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":296,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3526,82,3569],"tags":[3215,103,7291,714],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/296"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64102"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137282,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64102\/revisions\/137282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}