For today’s tech tip, the Harris County Law Library will share a number of power hacks, shortcuts, and well-kept secrets that will change your whole approach to searching. These underutilized features will increase the accuracy of your search results and allow you to get the most out of your Internet browsing experience.
Google is the most popular search engine, with an estimated 1,600,000,000 unique visitors per month. That’s roughly four times the number of visitors to the second most popular search engine, Microsoft’s Bing. Whichever site you prefer, it’s helpful to know the tips, tricks, and hidden features that make both engines so robust.
In both Google and Bing, there are a number of very useful operators that help to narrow your search results and give you the documents and/or websites you seek.
To locate nothing but PDFs, append filetype:PDF
Example: legal technology filetype:pdf
To search a particular site, append site:followed by the website URL
Example: legal technology site:harriscountylawlibrary.org
To search only the websites of academic institutions, append inurl:edu
Example: legal technology inurl:edu
To search only State of Texas government information websites, append inurl:state.tx.us
Example: legal technology inurl:state.tx.us
These are a few of the more popular search engine secrets that will help you in your research. For additional tips and tricks, visit the reference desk and ask for Google For Lawyers: Essential Search Tips and Productivity Tools. For a complete list of the advanced query operators used in Bing, visit the Advanced Operator Reference on MSN.microsoft.com.