Choose Search Terms (Don't Just Type Your Question)

Key Takeaways:

• Use keywords instead of natural language
• Choose words that have to show up in your ideal resource. 

How many pages of results will you look through with your typical Google search?

Most students say that they go through the first page, maybe the second. Overachievers will look at the third, but the typical Google search has thousands of results. How can you make sure that the best results show up at the very top? This video will help.

 

Don’t use natural language. Figure out what your topic is and use only the key terms.

Every word matters in a search

If you include words that are not important to your topic, a search engine like Google or a library database will still search for them. 

Example of an ineffective search:

What are occupational hazards of medical professionals?

Example of an effective search:

occupational hazards medical professionals

Word order matters

Blue sky gives different results than sky blue. Make sure not to separate key ideas but put your most important concept first. 

Here are the Google image search results for blue sky. Images of the sky. 

 

Here are the search results for sky blue. Color palettes. 

Word choice matters as well

Library databases and search engines find information resources by searching for your search terms in the title, abstract, subjects that have been assigned(think hashtags), and sometimes the full text of the item. If they do not find your search term in any of these places, they will not return that item as a result.

For better results think about the language that would be used in the type of source you want. For example education experts might use the term “academic performance” to express the concept of “better grades”. So a search for better grades, might not find relevant articles if that concept was expressed as academic performance instead. Similarly if you search for a resource about phones and grades using the keyword iPhones, but the author never users the term iPhone and only uses the term smartphones, then that perfect article will not appear in your search results.

Tip: Don't know what terms experts would use to talk about a subject. Try searching your topic in Google. A Google search for "Do poor people get different medical treatment?" brings up articles that mention the terms health care and low income. Another search mentions medical disparities and under-served populations all which are "expert" terms for the same topic.      

This really important paper would not show up in the results of a search for students and better grades because it never uses the term "better grades".  

Check your comprehension