By now, even second graders how to do a simple Google search. But search engines offer way more options beyond that. Here are a few that I’ve recently discovered…
Search within a certain domain. This will come in handy if you’ve written a bunch of articles for X website, but you forgot to bookmark them. Click on advanced search from the Google homepage, do a quick search for your byline and you’ll have a list of all your clips from your chosen domain (or enter your search term with site:XX.com). Say you want to write a query for Y website, but they don’t have a search function (shame on them) and you can’t remember if they’ve covered your topic already. Try a few different keyword phrases to see what the website has covered in the past so your query letter doesn’t overlap with their archives.
Show cached pages. A kind reader shared this tip with me when I thought I’d lost a bunch of clips, because the website disbanded. Turns out that all I had to do was click on the word “cached” and I could pull up an older version of the article so I could see the clip. Then I copied the cached into a word doc, fixed the formatting, and converted to a PDF.
Use Google’s keyword tool. This one is intended for use with Google adwords, but you can also use it to find related words and phrases for titling blog posts. For instance, if I enter the phrase “freelance writing” and sort by February search volume, the tool tells me that the most popular related phrases were “freelance writing jobs,” “freelance business writing,” and “freelance magazine writing.” Obviously, there’s a lot of competition for those phrases, so something slightly further down the list (like “freelance writing resources”) might be a good term to use so I’ll show up in more organic searches. A few weeks ago, I compiled a list of crazy keywords that showed up my Statcounter.
Update: Sign up for Google alerts. This one comes courtesy of Beth and her fabulous writing blog. Google alerts are fabulous, not just to see if anyone is misusing your work, but also to stay current in whatever your writing specialty is. Say your niche is medical writing, and you’re especially interested in new treatments for adolescent depression. Set up a Google alert for a few related phrases (using quotes so you won’t get a ton of miscellaneous results), and you’ll get emails whenever a new study or article hits the web.
I admit it… I’m not the most tech-savvy person, so this will be old news for some of you. Anyone have any search tips they’d like to add?
Once again, you’re my hero. Whatever techie info you have to pass along, you know there’s one writer out here that won’t have heard of it before
I’ve also found it’s useful when I’m working for overseas clients to use Google to find websites only in their country. That way I can be sure the information I’m getting applies to England or South Africa or wherever. Try Google.co.uk for British websites (click on “pages from the UK” under the search box) or Google.co.za for South Africa.
@Jennifer: good point! That tactic also comes in handy if you’re dating someone who’s lived in another country and you want to get the dirt on them.
Depending on what you’re researching, you may want to use Google Scholar instead of regular Google to get right to the results you need and bypass commercial sites. I’ve found it pretty handy lately!
@Aminquiry, wonderful tip! I didn’t know about that one, but it sounds like a great way to sift through the chaos that is the web.