Google Search Help

Google is more than a web search engine. Much more. It will search web pages, news articles, images, phone directories, books, and on and on. Google’s mission is to search the world. But in this section, we will be exploring only the web page search function. We won’t be touching on phonebook searches, movie searches, or any of the special searches here.

Google web search will search the millions of web pages stored on all the accessible servers on earth to find pages that match your search criteria. Although a simple program to use, if you don’t know anything beyond keying a few words in the search field you’ll have difficulty finding just what you are looking for. But by using a few simple techniques you’ll learn in the pages ahead, you can narrow your search down to a manageable set of results that most likely be what you require.

The techniques you must learn to master Google are not difficult. But, you need to spend a little time to get to know them. You need to know which tools work for what task.

Understanding the Search Results Page

The search results page lists your results by relevance, with each underlined item linked to the associated page.

We’ll describe the various parts of the Search Results Page here:

(A) Top links: Lists the links for the Google search services you want to use.

(B) Google search button: After entering any search criteria in the search field, you’ll click this button or simply hit the enter key.

(C) Advanced search: Click this link to bring up a fill-in form to perform an Advanced Search with many options.

(D) Search field: This is where you had keyed the search criteria.

(E) Preferences: Link to the Preferences Page from which you can set personal search preferences such as your language, filtering, number of search results per page and more.

(F) Statistics bar: This tells you the how many results the search found, the search criteria and a link to a definition if it is in the associated dictionary/encyclopedia with whom Google has partnered.

(G) Tip: There may or may not be a tip for searching more efficiently.

(H) OneBox results: Google’s search technology finds many sources of specialized information. Those that are most relevant to your search are included at the top of your search results. Typical onebox results include news, stock quotes, weather and local websites related to your search.

(I) Page title: Title of the web page listed. If the page has no title or has not yet been indexed by Google, it will show the URL.

(J) Text below the title: This snippet is an excerpt from the result page, with your query terms bolded. If Google has expanded the range of your search using stemming technology, the variations will also be bolded. If not yet indexed, there will be no snippet.

(K) URL of result: Web address of the returned result.

(L) Size: The size of the text portion of the web page. The size gives you an idea of how long it will take to load. Pages not yet indexed by Google will not show a size.

(M) Cached: Sometimes a page will not load due to either a server problem or a page that no longer exists. However, Google stores the last indexed version of the page in cache. Clicking on this link will show the cached page.

(N) Similar pages: When you select the Similar Pages link for a particular result, Google automatically scouts the Web for pages that are related to this result.

(O) Indented result: When Google finds multiple results from the same website, the most relevant result is listed first, with other relevant pages from that site indented below it.


(P) More results: If more than two results are found from the same site, the remaining results can be accessed by clicking on the “More results from…” link.


Setting Your Search Preferences

Before you get started using Google, you should check your preferences. You can do this by going to the main Google search page at Google.com, and clicking on the Preferences link to the right of the search field.

Here you will be able to change the the settings that will define your Google Web Search user experience.

Interface Language: Set the language in which you want the interface to communicate with you. Pretty self-explanatory. Note that the Google programmers had a little fun here and included the Elmer Fudd and Klingon languages. :)

Search Language: While English pages are the most prevalent, web pages are written in all languages. By default, Google will search without regard for language. It’s not going to translate a search word to search pages in another language, but it will look for the search term in any web pages written in any language. To keep this default selection make sure that Search for pages written in any language is selected.

Google recommends searching all languages, but why clutter up your search results page with site you won’t be able to read. I prefer to select only the languages I know how to read. You may select any number of languages here.

SafeSearch Settings: As everyone is aware, there are an overwhelming number of sites on the web that are not appropriate for kids, or most people for that matter. A search without safeguards in place can surely give you an unexpected eyeful.

Google’s SafeSearch setting lets you set up a safeguard to stop the inclusion of such sites in your search. Your choices are:

• Moderate filtering excludes most explicit images from Google Image Search results but does not filter ordinary web search results. This is your default SafeSearch setting; you'll receive moderate filtering unless you change it.
• Strict filtering applies SafeSearch filtering to all your search results (i.e., both image search and ordinary web search).
• No Filtering, as you've probably figured out, turns off SafeSearch filtering completely.

Number of Results: Set how many results you wish to see per page.


Results Window: Set whether or not to open search results in a new browser window. Default is no.