Using OR (|): expand your search (and then refine it!)
If you don’t know about plus, minus, inverted commas in search expressions, read this first!

I wanted to find out as much as possible about the meaning of the minor-seven-flat-five chord. (Why? Read this!). Since this is a pretty esoteric search topic, I didn’t want to miss any references. The table below charts my search progress. Explanations follow it.

1. Entering just "minor seven flat five" only produced 154 hits. I need to find synonyms…
2. Entering "minor seven flat five" | "half diminished" is the same as entering    
   "minor seven flat five" OR "half diminished" — the bar symbol just means OR.
   Now we know that half-diminished is 69 times more common an expression than minor seven flat five. Whoopee!
   
3. Adding |"accord diminué" produced another 1,800 results: worth knowing if you read French. This means that there were, when I did the search, nearly 42,000 web pages containing any of the three expressions.
4. Adding |"m7b5" (= min. 7 flat 5) to the search box swelled the number to 68,900. Whoops!
5. Adding |"m7-5" (= m7b5) made matters even worse: 207,000 hits! Browsing those links it became clear that amany pages contained the lyrics and chord charts of popular songs. Let's get rid of some…
6. Adding -guitar -tab eliminated pages containing either of the words guitar or tab: down to 160,000 hits.
7. Adding +analysis to the end of the search string radically reduced the count to 958.
8. Replacing +analysis with +musicology brought the number down to 118.
9. Replacing +musicology with +semiotics brought the number down to 40.
10. Entering "minor seven flat five" | "half diminished" | "m7b5" | "m7-5" -guitar -tab +analysis +musicology +semiotics brought the number down to 20. Thank you!
    That lengthy search expression literally means: list ANY web page containing ANY one or more of the expressions mentioned but NOT containing either of the words guitar or tab; at the same time the pages listed MUST contain all three of the words analysis.s, musicology and semiotics.

To the right of the Google search box you’ll see ‘Advanced Search’ — very useful. It may be ‘advanced’ from a programming point of view but you don’t have to be an I.T. geek to use it. Click Advanced search and you see something like this.

Let’s say (again) you want to find everything about the feeling or meaning of the half-diminished chord but wanted to avoid all those links to guitar tab pages of songs. Let’s say you also wanted there to be a music example or two. First, I’d enter semiotic OR semiotics into the first field (‘with all of the words’), then example in field 2 (‘with the exact phrase’), then the four ’words’ "minor seven flat five", "half diminished', "m7b5" and "m7-5" into the third field (‘with at least one of the words’). Finally, to avoid the guitar tab pages, I’d put guitar tab into the last field (‘without the words’). The I’d click ‘Google search’. You may find ten or so pages displayed but only two of them deal with the subject you’re actually investigating. That’s perfectly normal and better than nothing at all.

To the right of the Google search box you’ll see Preferences. Click it to set defaults for language (or level of pornoography) you prefer. This text deals only with Search languages.

On the Preferences page, Google rightly recommend searching for web pages in All languages. Why? Well, if you want information about, say, Rachid Taha (enter "Rachid Taha") and if your search preference is for pages in English only, you've missed the boat: only 23% of all Taha-related sites are in English while 52% are in French. Solution? Set Search language preference to All and learn French!

Still, even with Research language set to All, entering "dance music" produces 15 times more hits then does "musique de danse".

À droite de la boîte de recherche chez Google, vous verrez Préférences. Cliquez là-dessus et cochez quelle[s] langue[s] vous choisissez (et quel niveau de pornographie vous acceptez). Ici on ne parlera que des Langues de recherche.

Sur la page Préférences de Google, on vous conseille, avec raison, de rechercher les pages Web dans Toutes les langues. Pourquoi? Des exemples: seulement 2% des pages Web sur le reggae sont en français. Même Debussy existe sur une page en français 6 fois moins souvent que dans une autre langue, principalement l’anglais.

Il vaut la peine de noter que l’expression de Recherche "dance music" produit 15 fois plus de résultats (toutes les langues) que la phrase "musique de dance". Solution? Choisissez Toutes les langues de recherche et apprenez bien l’anglais!

Google.ca (Canada) and google.fr (France) are both available in either French or English. Both language versions list the same number of references for the same search. If you choose French as Search language, pages in French are listed first and vice versa if you choose English.

The same principle applies to google.de (deutsch — German titles first if you choose German) , google.it (italiano), google.pt (português), etc. One exception: Google.es (España) offers no English-first listing but does offer that service for Catalan, Galician, Basque and Spanish.

For essential information about Google search language selection, please read the previous section.

Les domaines google.ca (Canada) et google.fr (France) sont disponibles en anglais ou en français. Les deux versions linguistiques génèrent exactement le même nombre de références en réponse à la même recherche. Si vous sélectionnez le français comme Langue de recherche, les pages en français apparaîtront les premières. L’ordre de présentation est renversé si vous sélectionnez l’anglais.

Le même principe s’applique aux domaine google.de (deutsch — les titres en allemand au début de la liste si on choisit cette langue plutôt que l’anglais), google.it (italiano), google.pt (português), etc. Une exception: Google.es (España) n’offre aucune option anglophone. En revanche on peut choisir le catalan, le galicien, le basque et l’espagnol.

Pour des renseignements essentiels sur le choix de langue pour les recherches Google, lisez s.v.p. la section précédente sur cette page.

Google Scholar is useful if you’re doing a university assignment. You’ll avoid all the commercial junk and just get links to academic sites without having to trawl through tons of irrelevant stuff or spend time trying to refine your search. For example, entering semiotic +musicology "film music" generates no more than 150 links — very manageable! Google scholar is at http://scholar.google.com/. Bookmark it!

Google Book is useful if you need to find a book on a particular subject. In January 2007 I only found 19 book references when I entered semiotic +musicology "film music" (Jan. 2007). That’s probably because Google doesn’t scan all books, especially not those from very minor publishers like the MMMSP! Still, there wer 649 books referring to both reggae and dub (+reggae +dub), so there’s no longer really much excuse for a skimpy bibliography in the case of most university assignments. Google book is at http://books.google.com/. Bookmark it!

When you quote or summarise from the web in your own work, you must make a note of each page’s:

• title,
• URL (http://www…),
• the date you accessed the page.

This page, for example, accessed on 15 July 2007, would appear in your bibliography as follows:

Tagg, Philip. ‘Web browsing and Google searches’.   www.tagg.org/zmisc/WebSrch.htm (2007-07-15).

This information should be included in your bibliography. For more on this topic, see this document, §§ 11.4.2 and 12.2.

Lorsque vous citez ou que vous résumez dans votre travail le contenu d’une page Web, il faut noter, pour chaque page :

• le titre,
• l’URL (http://www…),
• la date de votre accès à la page.

Par exemple, cette page, accédée le 15 juillet 2007, devrait apparaître dans votre bibliographie comme ceci:

Tagg, Philip. ‘Web browsing and Google searches’. www.tagg.org/zmisc/WebSrch.htm (2007-07-15).

Ces informations doivent apparaître dans votre bibliographie. Pour en savoir plus, consultez ce document (en anglais), §§ 11.4.2 et 12.2.