Selecting Search Words
General terms will return many of possible references. Use terms that are more specific to your query. To narrow your search:
1. look at sites that are relevant to your search.
2. use Latin names when possible.
Say you are looking for information on liriope also called Lily Turf, Monkey Grass or Border Grass. A typical search might be "liriope" and would return 181,000 references. If you change the search using special search tags (see below) it will help you reduce the number of references and increase the revalence at the same time. For example: a search of "liriope site:edu" would return 3,950 references and a search of "liriope site:uaex.edu" would return 15 references.
You may use any combination of tags in any order. A search of "site:edu filetype:pdf intitle:liriope" will return 26 references where liriope is in the title of a PDF document at a college or university (edu).
The previous examples all imply that each additional search tag further restricts the search. What if you want to restrict the search to a few specific sites. My favorite plant sites are usex.edu (University of Arkansas), usda.gov (United States Department of Agriculture) and okstate.edu (Oklahoma State) so my search would be "liriope (site:uaex.edu | site:okstate.edu | site:usda.gov)". Notice the "|" (or) indicator and the entire "or" phrase is enclosed by "(" and ")".
Some useful search tags
- intitle: (Example: intitle:plant will search for the word plant in the title of documents only)
- intext: (Example: intext:figs will search for the word figs in the body of documents only)
- site: (Example: native site:edu will search for the word native only on sites whos domain’s end in edu)
- filetype: (Example: intitle:native site:uaex.edu filetype:pdf will search for the word native in the title only on sites where the domain’s end in uaex.edu and have a filetype of PDF)