UIS Tip of the Week: Nifty Commands to Maximize Your Internet Searches

How many times have you searched for information on the Internet, only to be inundated with hundreds of thousands of results that make you wonder how some of those results got there in the first place? And do you really have the time (or the patience!) to sift through all of these results just to find what you?re looking for? Wouldn?t it be great to get the results you want and need?

So rather than performing the usual search and hoping for the best, you can instead target your searches and get significantly fewer (and more relevant) results with a few simple commands at your disposal.

The table below lists and briefly describes each command, displays the command syntax, and provides an example of each command.

To use the command, just enter it in the Search field in either Google or Yahoo.

Happy searching!

Description	Command Syntax	Example
Search for a definition of a word or phrase. In addition to definitions on the Web, displays related phrases and links to results in other languages.	define:word	define:jesuit Shows definitions of "jesuit" from different Web pages.

Search for a key word or phrase within a particular Web site.	site:URL search term	site:www.georgetown.edu "jesuit" Lists the Web pages where "jesuit" appears in the Georgetown University Web site.

Search for a key word or phrase within a particular file type.	filetype:file extension search term	filetype:ppt "sustainable" "prevention" Displays Microsoft PowerPoint files that contain "sustainable" and "prevention".

Search for a key word or phrase in a particular domain name.	site:domain name search term	site:edu "jesuit" "history" Displays a list of Web site with the .edu extension that contain the words "jesuit" and "histrory".

Search for a key word or phrase for a list of related Web sites.	related:URL	related:washingtonpost.com Displays Web sites (mainly news sites) that are related to washingtonpost.com.