Some considerations to bear in mind: there are slight nuances with each search engine, so not all operators will work across all search engines additionally, starting your search too refined may mean you lose sight of potentially helpful information and, over time, can cause your own biases to creep in due to not seeing opposing or contradictory results. These two are helpful when looking for technical specifications such as manufacturer brochures or large structured data sets. In that situation, you can add the operator 'filetype:pdf' or 'filetype:xls' to only return results containing your specified document types. ![]() Practice by starting with broad search terms on Google, then narrow down your results using Boolean operators.Īnother great use of Boolean searching is when you suspect the information you're after is likely contained in certain document types, such as PDFs or Excel spreadsheets. For instance, to find articles about the Morocco earthquake that were indexed in 2023, you'd search "morocco earthquake" after. ![]() *Note: Exclude the apostrophes from upcoming search operators and strings.*īoolean searches refine data using operators like 'AND', 'OR', '-'/'NOT', 'after:' and 'before:'. Essentially, it operates by including or excluding search terms based on a specified condition being met, which aids in returning more relevant search results, resulting (usually) in a more efficient research process. Boolean searching is a fundamental skill of effective (re)search, with its origin rooted in mathematics, proofs, and logic.
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