Tips on using Google to find the good stuff. Journalists often turn to Google to find everything from public profiles to government data. Here's some tips to help you find the good stuff more easily.

1. Tips to search like a journalist on Google By L.A. Lorek @lalorek

3. This/Not That Paris, Texas Paris, France Paris, France Paris, Texas

4. Finding the Right Stuff When searching, what you leave out is just as important as what you include. So to eliminate stuff, just put a minus sign “-” in front of the word or words you don’t want to appear in the search results. Try these out: Paris Texas –France Alamo –car -rental Cheech –Chong

5. Still haven’t found what you’re looking for ?

6. Phrase Search Use “” double quotes around a phrase if you want Google to only consider those words. Google will exclude everything else but what’s in the quote marks so make sure the phrase is accurate. For example “L.A. Lorek” my byline yields different results than “Laura Lorek”

8. Restricted Searches To search successfully, you’ve got to shut out all that other noise. If you just want to search a select Web site, then use this command - subject site:website to find documents on the specified site. For example: Constitution site:archives.gov

10. Fill in the Blank Stumped? Don’t remember something? Go ask Google. Let Google “fill in the blank” by adding an asterisk (*) to the information you want to find out. It works. Check out the next page.

13. The Power of the Plus Sign Google ignores common words and characters so if a common word is essential to getting the results you want, put a “+” sign in front of it.

14. Related Searches Want to find web pages that have similar content? Type "related:" followed by the website address into the Google search box.

16. Google U.S. Government Search Search across federal, state and local government websites at usgov.google.com

18. Google Scholar With Google Scholar you can search books and articles from leading academic journals and conferences on many topics.

20. Public Data on Google Google makes it easier to find and use public data from government sources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. Just go to www.google.com/publicdata

23. For more search information please visit: visit http://www.google.com/help/features.html#query

24. Laura Lorek @lalorek www.techchi.com