Categories: OLD Media Moves

Using better Google for journalists

Sean Carlson from Google has held sessions Friday and Saturday at the annual Society of American Business Editors and Writers conference on how journalists can use the search engine more effectively.

Here are some of his tips:

1. Don’t worry about capitalization. In addition, put minus (-) in front of words whose meaning you’re not working for. (When writing about H1N1, search “viruses -computer.”

2. Specific site search is the single-most helpful feature. You can refine a Google search to one URL. “bluefin tuna site:washingtonpost.com” will find articles on bluefin tuna at The Washington Post site.

3. The Google advanced search (http://www.google.com/advanced_search) function allows you to look for specific files, such as pdf files and Power Point presentations, if you know you’re looking for such documents.

4. Look at two sites to see what’s hot and what’s not in terms of searching. They are http://www.google.com/trends/ and http://www.google.com/insights/search.

5. There is a way to search just government sites. Go to http://www.google.com/unclesam.

Recent Posts

WSJ taps Beaudette to oversee business, finance and economy

Wall Street Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker sent out the following on Friday: Dear…

49 seconds ago

NY Times taps Searcey to cover wealth and power

New York Times metro editor Nestor Ramos sent out the following on Friday: We are delighted to…

2 hours ago

The evolution of the WSJ beyond finance

Rahat Kapur of Campaign looks at the evolution The Wall Street Journal. Kapur writes, "The transformation…

17 hours ago

Silicon Valley Biz Journal seeks a reporter

This position will be Hybrid in the office/market 3 days per week, and those days…

17 hours ago

Economist’s Bennet, WSJ’s Morrow receive awards

The Fund for American Studies presented James Bennet of The Economist with the Kenneth Y. Tomlinson Award…

1 day ago

WSJ is testing AI-generated article summaries

The Wall Street Journal is experimenting with AI-generated article summaries that appear at the top…

1 day ago