Skip to Main Content

Biomedical Engineering

Search Strategies

Search Strategies for Databases and Search Engines

1. Always type AND, OR, and NOT in capitalized form.

2 . Always use synonyms. Group similar words or synonyms with OR and parenthesis. Group different concepts together

with AND.

3. Use wildcard (*) toward the end of a keyword to retrieve all variations of that word. [Do not use it on Google]

4. Use double quotes (“”) around two or more words when you want the database or search engine to search for those

words as a phrase.

5. Always do a comprehensive search and then narrow it down.

6. Build your vocabulary as you search for articles in different databases and search engines.

Google Search Techniques

Web

Scholar

Patents

Video

Images

Automatic spell-check

Search for a specific phrase → "Computer Simulation”

Exclude words using '-' sign → Games -online

[no space after minus sign]

Combine search using OR → race OR marathon

Word in the title ​→ allintitle:“real-time simulation”

[no space after colon]

Words in the text ​→ allintext:“real-time simulation”

[no space after colon]

Related website search → related:cnn.com

[To retrieve similar sites]

Specific document type → "augmented reality" filetype:ppt

[no space after colon]

Search within a specific website → site:cdc.gov "SARS fever"

[no space after colon]

View cached version of a site → cache:sjsu.edu

[no space after colon]

Use @ for social media → @orkut

Use $ to return price → Laptop $500

Search # → #sjsuspartans

Other Search Techniques

  • You can perform a private search on other Google products. Just type 'my' followed by a keyword. The following search return correct results: my flights, my reminders, my packages, my calendar, my events, my photos, my bills and my reservations 
    Note: You need to sign in your Gmail account first.
  • Timer ⇒ 20 min timer
  • Stopwatch ⇒ stopwatch
  • Calculator ⇒ 48512 * 1.02
  • Unit converter ⇒ degrees to Fahrenheit
  • Plot graphs ⇒ sin(x), e^(x)