Centre for Physical Activity, Sport and Exercise Sciences (PASES): Using Search Engines
Google Scholar
Use the search box below to search Google Scholar. Google Scholar is straightforward to use, and unlike regular Google will find scholarly material, including peer reviewed journal articles.
Note: To identify yourself as Coventry University user:
- go to Settings at the the top of the Google Scholar search screen
- select Library links
- Search for "Coventry University" and click Save.
Alternatives to Google
Did you know that Google tracks your search history and changes the results it gives you based on what it thinks you want to see? Fortunately, Google is not the only search engine out there. So whether you're struggling to make Google give you what you want, or you have concerns about Google's respect for your privacy, you may wish to try out these alternatives:
Bing is Microsoft's search engine. You may find that it gives you very different results to Google so using search commands is recommended to uncover relevant results.
Worried about privacy? DuckDuckGo doesn't track or save your search history. It's also really easy to swap to different country's versions of DuckDuckGo if you want to obtain results specific to a particular region.
Very useful search engine for finding specialist information otherwise buried by Google and Bing. With the aim of removing 'popular' search results, it allows the user to choose how many 'top sites' (which may be top of the results list in a Google or Bing search) they wish to remove from their results list.
Searching Google Effectively
If you are looking for information through Google, there are many advanced search techniques which can help you get to the information you need more quickly. They can also help you to find more reliable information. Click the links below for a full list of search tips, or the tabs above for some of the most useful commands.
- Top Google Search TipsA list of the most useful search techniques you can use in Google.
- Refine Web SearchesThis is Google's own guide to advanced search techniques. It doesn't include everything, but is a nice quick-reference guide.
- Selected Google CommandsA list of commands you can use in Google.
You can ask Google to search individual websites or groups of websites sharing a domain. To do this, type site: followed by the web address or domain without any spaces. For example:
- site:bbc.co.uk would search the BBC website
- site:gov.uk would search UK government websites
- site:ac.uk would search UK university websites
You can combine this with file type searching. For example, if you search for site:gov.uk filetype:pdf you may be able to find UK government reports.
Google can search for documents that are available online based on their file format. To do this, type filetype: followed by the file format with no spaces. For example:
- filetype:pdf will search for PDF documents
- filetype:ppt will search for PowerPoint presentations
- filetype:doc will search for Word documents
- filetype:xls will search for Excel spreadsheets
Note that newer documents created in Microsoft Office often have an 'x' on the end (e.g. docx instead of doc). You will need to search for these separately.
You can combine this with domain searching. For example, if you search for filetype:ppt site:ac.uk you may be able to find lecture slides from other UK universities.