Searches on the Open Web can often be useful starting points for your research, but they can also often return irrelevant or non-scholarly results. To improve your Google searches, try limiting your search by various domains or otherwise refining your search using these search tips:
Search any one of multiple terms (as opposed to searching all terms, which is the default):
Limit your search by domain:
Limit your search to words in the title:
Remove unwanted results:
Limit by date:
Examples
For information on AIDS in Ghana, try these searches in Google:
aids ghana (a general search across domains)
aids ghana site:.gov (limits to information from U.S. government sites)
aids ghana site:.edu (limits to information from U.S. educational institutions)
aids ghana site:.org (limits to information from non-profit organizations)
This may be one you haven't tried before:
aids ghana site:.gh (limits to information from Ghanaian websites)
See other country codes here.
For more reliable Google results, you can limit your search to a particular site or domain.
Sites from U.S. institutions of higher education and the U.S. government tend to be more reliable than .coms and even many .orgs, but still be critical, seeking out author info and other determinants of credibility.
e.g. hiv site:.edu
e.g. hiv site:haverford.edu
e.g. hiv site:.gov
e.g. hiv site:pa.gov
