Google for journalists

by David Poulson, associate director, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism

A private detective once told me how she used Google to nab a crook for workers' compensation fraud.

She plugged the guy's full name into the search engine. Nothing too interesting came up. But then she entered it with the last name before the first name.

Bingo! Up popped a link to a list of competitors in a local karate tournament – one that her suspect competed in on a date when he missed work ostensibly for a back injury.

That's the way it is with Google. You don't need to be too terribly sophisticated to get the most out of perhaps the greatest journalistic tool since the chisel and stone tablet. But there are a few handy tricks that make things easier.

That name reversal thing is handy not only for lists, but for finding footnotes and other citations of documents written by your target. Put into Google your own last name before your first name. You may be surprised at how often your work is cited in academic and other publications.

Just make sure you put names in quotation marks to search for the exact word order. A search without the quotation marks produces documents with the target words scattered throughout it and in any order.

But you knew that. Here are a few easy but powerful tips you may not know:

Get more results

• Set your Google preferences to 100 results per page. The default is 10, but you're more likely to check more search results the fewer times you have to click on the next page. That increases your chances of finding the perfect hit.

Pile on

• We're journalists. We're impatient. Use other search engines with Google if for no other reason then that the perfect link may rise to the top in one but not the other. Try dogpile.org for one-stop shopping of multiple search engines. (And while you're there, for a voyeuristic thrill, hit “search spy” to view what others are searching for that instant – even the dirty words.)

Stock prices

• Did that big settlement you're writing about depress the company's stock value? Readers with 401Ks want to know. Enter a stock abbreviation – NYT, GCI, SSP, whatever – and get back the value of shares trading now and the high and lows for the day. It should be the last check you run before hitting send on a story about any publicly traded company.

Conversions and calculations

• Type “teaspoons in 1.79 gallons” and you'll find there are 1,374.72. That's a handy feature when you're in need of metric or other conversions. But for fun, try converting some of those obscure units from high school physics. How many joules are there in 1.27 ergs? How many grams in 3 stones?

Definitions

• Type
define:
before a search term and Google will produce definitions of that term. The same technique produces links to definitions of any word.

Links to judge credibility

• Enter
link:
before the URL of a Web site to produce links to sites that link to the Web site you're searching for information about. Such a search hints at a site's credibility by giving you an idea of the company it keeps. If NASA links to www.littlegreenmen.org, you might view that site with some astonishment.

Search one site

• Narrow a search to a specific Web site by typing in your search term and
site:
followed by the URL of the site you want to search. For example, a search for
"len bruzzese" site:www.healthjournalism.org
confines the search to references to Len Bruzzese on the AHCJ site. Bruzzese hits elsewhere are ignored.

Look up area codes

• Ever look at a phone message and wonder about the location of the caller?
Type the area code into Google to produce a map of the region it covers.

Find song lyrics

• Got an idea for the perfect lede based on lyrics you can't quite remember? Go to Google and type lyrics: followed by the words you do recall.

Use wild cards to find your answer

• You're not looking for Web pages that ask your question. You want those with the answer.

Don't type,"What is the average temperature in Death Valley?" Try instead, "The average temperature in Death Valley is *"

That asterisk is a wild card. Envision the words that appear on the page from a perfect search and enter as many as you can.

Eliminate unrelated search results

• Subtract unwanted results with the minus sign. Search for
bass –fish
and you'll more likely get pages about low musical tones (or bass ale) than about fishing tournaments.

Phone directory or reverse directory

• Enter a name (use quote marks) and city and get a phone number.
E nter a phone number and get a name and an address.

Track a flight, track a plane

• Flight numbers produce a link to a map of that flight's progress.

Tail numbers produce the full registration form for that plane.

Bar codes revealed

• A UPC bar code number gives a description of the product you found it on.

Identify a car

• A Vehicle Identification Number produces a car's year, make and model.

Track packages

• FedEx or UPS package numbers produce links to tracking information.

Advanced Search is your friend

• Don't be afraid of that advanced search button on Google. It walks you through many ways to get the most out of a search. One of my favorites limits returns by file format. Say you're looking for data to crunch. Put in your search term and limit the returns to files with a .xls format. You'll get links just to files produced by a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.You can also do this by typing filetype: followed by the three-letter extension of the file format you're looking for. For example:

• filetype:xls
• filetype:doc
• filetype:pdf
• filetype:jpg

More under development

• Want more? Check out the applications under development at http://labs.google.com. There you'll find links to some nifty Google experiments.

Cheat sheets are your friend

Get more tips and examples from this cheat sheet from Google. 

David Poulson teaches computer-assisted, investigative and environmental reporting at Michigan State University. He can be reached at poulson@msu.edu.