Google Scholar searching tips

More students and faculty are using Google Scholar for their research all the time. Here are some tips for improving your search results: 

 The opening page of Google Scholar has a link in very tiny print next to the heading called “Advanced Scholar Search.”  Clicking on this brings up a search template that gives you much more robust searching tools – you can limit by subject category (the categories are huge, but one of my frustrations with Google Scholar initially was the preponderance of scientific articles — choosing Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities and/orBusiness, Administration, Finance, and Economics allows you to filter those out).  You can also limit by date, and use the template to add precision to your search terms or limit where they appear (search by author, or look for words in the title).  Note also that you can limit a search for a legal document by jurisdiction. 

For those wishing to become real power users, see Advanced Search Tips  on the upper right for advanced search syntax and more detailed instructions for the searching template.   Happy researching!