
Use it while IRCing without the other person noting your pauses, it’s not fast 2 You should be able to search instinctively within a split second of becoming curious, with a few keystrokes. Scholar (GS)/Wikipedia (WP) into a reflex. (There are many more G search operators ( Russell description) but they aren’t necessarily worth learning, because they implementĮsoteric functionality and most seem to be buggy 1.)Įnable some kind of hotkey search with both prompt and copy-paste selection buffer, to turn searching Google (G)/Google Want to play with Advanced Search to understand what is possible. Site:/docs/genetics/, or to exclude folders, foo site: -site:/docs/).

Key G search operators: double quotes for exact matches, hyphensįor negation/exclusion, and site: for search a specific website or specific directory of that website (eg foo Have a question: “Google is your friend.” Your only search guaranteed to fail is the one you never run. The first thing you must do is develop a habit of searching when you Papers Search Preparationĭo or do not there is no try. Rough flowchart of how to go about an online search, explaining the subtle tricks and tacit knowledge of search-fu. Below, I reveal my best Internet search tricks and try to provide a If it’s not the first hit in Google/Google Scholar, it doesn’t exist. The Internet is the greatest almanac of all, and to theĬurious, a never-ending cornucopia, so I am sad to see many fail to find things after a cursory search-or not look at all. Rest of my life would be spent dealing with searches, paywalls, and broken links. And I can still remember the exact moment it dawned on me in high school that much of the Things in the almanac not infrequently, I’d win.


Google-fu search skill is something I’ve prided myself ever since elementary school, when the librarian challenged the class to find

My search workflow, and give general advice about finding and hosting documents, with demonstration case Well-known, like checking the Internet Archive ( IA) for books. Over time, I developed a certain google-fu and expertise in finding references, papers, and books online.
