Use Google to Find Reports From a Specific Site

The ability to find prepared documents from a quality source will save time and allow you to access information few others know how to find. The Filetype Filter will allow you to select whether you want a report, a spreadsheet, or presentation. The Site Search Filter will limit your results to a specific site.

Filetype and Site Search

1. Enter the terms you are looking for, followed by [filetype:] and the letters representing the filetype you need-- PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT

2. Next, enter [site:] followed by the website that you want your results to come from

3. For example, [green technologies filetype:pdf site:usda.gov]

The above example would provide you with reports on Green Technologies as they relate to Agriculture, since they are coming from the USDA's website. To find information coming from the technology sector, enter [green technologies filetype:pdf site:cisco.com]. This search will limit your results to coming from Cisco Systems website.

Use Google to Compare How Different Companies Cover the Same Topic

One of the main challenges a person faces when searching on the internet is ensuring that the results come from a source that contains relevant information. Very often, sites that aggregate a wide variety of information appear higher in the results since they have a higher Page Ranking. For example, Wikipedia has a tremendous number of pages and therefore appears towards the top of most searches on a generic topic. While the Wikipedia article may be very well written, it may not contain the type of information you are looking for.

Before conducting a search, ask yourself what types of results you would like to find. Do you want them to be a technical in nature? Should the results be from a government agency? If so, use Site Search to limit your results.

Site Search
1. Enter your keywords followed by site: and the domain that want to limit your results to.
2. For example, enter [term 1 site:mit.edu] to limit your results to MIT's website

You can also limit your results to Government Websites by entering [term 1 site:.gov]. In addition, you use the same search terms, and search two different sites at the same time to compare how the different companies report on the same topic. Type the OR filter in-between the two sites that you want to research. Here is an example taken from the news, ["toyota recall" site:www.foxnews.com OR site:www.cnn.com]. Of course, you can use any terms and any websites that would help give you a competitive advantage in your industry.

Search by Title of a Document

Searching by document type is a great way to ensure that you are finding information you need in the format you want. The filetype: filter is great for finding PDFs, DOCs, or XLSs.

Yet sometimes, using the filetype filter shows results where the keywords are in the body of the document and not closely correlated to what you are really looking for. To ensure your document is related to your keywords, use the Keyword Location filter.

Keyword Location

1. Type allintitle: followed by your keywords, followed by filetype: and your selected file type.

2. For example, [allintitle:social media trends filetype:pdf]

Use the allintitle: when you only want results with every keyword in the title. Type intitle: followed by the keywords and Google will look for results that have most of the words in the title. If you searched using the allintitle: filter and Google responded with "did not match any documents," search again with intitle:.