The best Google tricks for writing research articles
Whether you’re doing a quick fact check or writing an in-depth investigative piece, these simple tricks and tips can help you to harness the power of Google for good.
On a trip to the Philippines, my then boyfriend and I were wondering about the country’s socioeconomic situation. Looking around, it seemed that many people were indigent, though the reported poverty levels in the Philippines stood in stark contrast to this.
Most articles appearing in Google’s search results indicated that fewer than 20% of Filipinos live below the poverty line, while some bore headlines about the coming eradication of economic insecurity.
Now, we could have taken this in face value. In fact, because the information was presented by legitimate news outlets (e.g. Al Jazeera, The World Bank), my boyfriend did. But being involved in publishing and journalism, I was a bit more sceptical.
A few targeted searches about the Philippines’ political system led me to its president, Rodrigo Duterte, and the conclusion that anything written on the back of government-issued statistics should be considered with a fair amount of scrutiny.
Why do I tell you this? Well, because it’s often difficult to find the ‘truth’ on the internet. Even more so when objective new stories are obscured by positive press releases and propaganda.
The research skills that help journalists and other writers separate fact from fiction take years to develop. There is good news, though: Google’s easy-to-use search operators will refine your searches and uncover accurate and reliable information.
Here are a few that are both highly effective and easy to use:
| What it is | What it looks like | Example | What it does | Why it’s useful |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exact phrase operator | ” “ | Rodrigo Duterte “authoritarian” | Searches for the exact phrase that appears between the quotation marks | If you’re looking for specific information, like whether Duterte is considered to be an authoritarian ruler, you’ll likely expect certain terms to appear in the results. The exact phrase operator filters for results containing that combination of words, making the number of results easier to handle. |
| Negative operator | – | Philippines economy -coronavirus -covid19 | Excludes results containing certain words | Instructing Google to omit results containing particular words refines your search by excluding information that’s irrelevant for your purposes; for example, how the state is dealing with coronavirus. |
| Pro tip: Use the exact phrase and negative operators together to exclude an entire phrase from your search. For example: Philippines authoritarianism -”ferdinand marcos” |
| Or operator | or | Philippines poverty line OR inequality | Searches for one or more alternate terms in potential results | This operator is useful where various terms or phrases are used interchangeably. However, searching the possible alternatives will return broader results. Take note: the “OR” must be upper case. |
| Proximity operator | around(#) | authoritarian AROUND(3) Duterte | Refines results to show only those where the search terms are within the specified range of one another | The general linguistic assumption is that words that the proximity of words in a text indicates a relationship between those words. For example, if you’re wondering if Duterte is an authoritarian figure, it’s likely that writers will have used ‘authoritarian’ near to his name in a sentence at some point. |
| Range operator | .. | Philippines political regime 1980..2015 | Two periods indicate acceptable range within which information could fall, including dates, measurements and prices | It may sometimes be necessary to restrict your results to a particular date, measurement or price range; for example, the political dispensation in the Philippines leading up to Duterte’s rule. The range operator is particularly useful for product research. |
| File type operator | filetype:XX | Philippines poverty statistics filetype:PDF | Returns only results where the search term is contained in the specified file type | If you’re looking for reports, research papers or other official releases – like when researching official statistics – it’s likely that these documents have been published or saved in a particular format; searching that file type will narrow the results for a more likely match. |
| All in title operator | allintitle:XX | Philippines poverty allintitle:rate below 20% | Fetches results that feature all identified terms in the title (H1) of the page | Where you’ve read an article previously and can’t remember which site it was on but can remember some of the pertinent words or phrases in the title (e.g. that poverty in the Philippines is below 20%), you can refine the results to include only articles containing these words. |
| Site operator | site:xxx.xxx | site:bbc.com Philippines | Search a particular website for a specified term or phrase | There are a few sites – like the BBC – whose pre-publication checks and balances make them a likely source for fact-based reporting. It can be useful to search these sites for particular phrases to get an overview of a topic. |
| Pro tip: All three of these operators, or any combination of them, are useful for finding trustworthy reports and papers. |
| Link operator | link:xxx.xxx/xx | link:business.inquirer.net/281269/ph-poverty-rate-seen-falling-below-20-starting-2020 | Identifies sites and pages that link to a particular URL | The link operator can help to determine the reliability of a source, and help you to find related content and reporting. If most of the links to the page are from less-than-reputable or outwardly biased sites, this should be a red flag about the trustworthiness of the source. |
| Related operator | related:xxx.xx | related:inquirer.com.ph | Returns websites related to the site identified in the search | Another useful tool for identifying how trustworthy a source is. As with the link search, the related operator will help you to identify any affiliations or biases a site might have. |
| Pro tip: Use your intuition along with these tools. Many usually trustworthy outlets linking to a particular page doesn’t necessarily mean its content is reliable, be sure to approach all search results with a healthy dose of skepticism. |
Conclusion
Harnessing these search operators can help you to find accurate information from trustworthy sources to write balanced and objective reporting pieces.
