I like to consider myself a fairly skilled google user, but lately I have been having difficulties with finding the info that I need to know. I am a part-time freelance writer (lots of generic web & SEO stuff), and while I rarely have to do actual “research”, I do like to look at other opinions/ facts/ ideas on the topic so that I am providing relevant information as well as compelling prose. In general, the difficulties arise because I am trying to find articles/ information and what I mainly get are commercial websites trying to sell me the things I want information about. The current example would be that I am trying to find info about designer or couture wedding dress - why spend the extra money, pros and cons, what makes a designer dress worth more, etc. I can find about a bajillion places to buy wedding dresses, but not the info I want. Any help, on this specific topic or better yet on how to polish up my googlefu a bit?
I don’t know if this will help with your specific question but my most useful tip is to include part of the phrase that your ideal link would include in quotes. To make something up, I want to find what year A Tale of Two Cities was published and I don’t really care about reading link after link about general Charles Dickens info.
I made this up in real time but it almost always works with some fiddling.
Yeah, I meant to say that and I totally forgot. I do know about usuing quotes, it just seems that when I do so for these articles (and I should note that I have no problem googling/ finding information in everyday life or when doing academic research, it really just seems to be when I’m writing), my searches either becomes so narrow that they have no results, or one or two worthless ones, or they remain so broad that it doesn’t affect the results much.
Thanks for the suggestion, though. I appreciate the response, even though I should really be smart enough to stay far, far away from the SDMB when I have articles due tomorrow.
There’s Google News, and Google Scholar, and others.