16 chapter 2

By default, any search performed from this page will search Google’s database
of web content. From here you can also click on links to search various other
Google databases, such as Images, Videos, News, Books, and Maps. Others are
available through the “More” link, which we cover later in this chapter. Google
also offers users the ability to customize their Google home page through the
“Sign in” to their Google account at the upper right corner of the page.
Basic searches are performed by entering your search terms, and any oper-
ators as needed, into the search box and clicking on one of the two available
buttons. Those buttons are “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky.” Clicking
on the “Google Search” button—which can also be activated by pressing your
Enter key while your cursor is in the search box—performs your search and
presents you with a list of results. Clicking on “I’m Feeling Lucky” performs
your search, but instead of presenting you with a list of results, it takes you
right to the page that was the first result. This is as if you had clicked on
“Google Search,” retrieved your list of results, and clicked on the first result
yourself.
The “I’m Feeling Lucky” option works very well when you’re pretty sure of
where you’re going to end up. For example, searching on such terms as mic-
rosoft, nike, or wikipedia will retrieve for you www.microsoft.com, www.nike
.com, and www.wikipedia.org, respectively. However, if you’re not sure of
the end result, as with more complex searches, or if you don’t want to take
the chance of displaying something potentially inappropriate to a patron, the
standard “Web Search” option is your better choice.

Advanced Search

If you’re still having trouble finding what you need, additional filtering is
available via the Advanced Search page. Click on the gear icon in the upper
right corner of your results page. From the pull-down menu, choose “Advanced
Search.” Figure 2.2 shows all the options available here.
To start with, you will have the usual word-limiting options.
The next section of the form is “Then narrow your results by . . .” Here you
have more options that are specific to the type of search you are doing. For a
web search, the options are:

• Language
This field allows you to limit your results to only those in a particular
language. At the time of this writing, there were more than 40 language
choices, ranging from Afrikaans to Vietnamese. The default is “Any lan-
guage.”