1. How to Use Online Searching
Quick Navigation
Task 1: How to search general information with Google? ……………..…………….….…..…………. 2
Practice A: find the official web site of Newcastle University ..……..………………….……… 2
This document is used for Newcastle University Alumni training only.
Practice B: find tomorrow’s weather of Newcastle upon Tyne …………....…………..….…... 3
Practice C: search images, videos, and other types of information .…………..…..……..... 3
Task 2: How to use online Map searching with Google? ….……………………..…….….…..……….. 4
Practice A: locate Newcastle University from the Map ……………….……………................... 4
Practice B: find the route to Newcastle University from Central Station? …….………… 5
Appendix I: What else can I do with Google Search? ..………………...………………..………………. 6
Appendix II: Similar services ..………………………….…...………………..……………..………………….…..... 6
Q: What is online searching?
Online searching is to use web search engine to search information from internet.
A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide
Web and FTP servers. The information may consist of web pages, images,
information and other types of files. Google Search is the most-used search
engine on the Web. Google Search can be used to find synonyms, weather
forecasts, time zones, stock quotes, maps, earthquake data, movie showtimes,
airports, home listings, and sports scores, etc.
Q: Why use online searching?
Comparing with traditional methods of searching information, online search is:
 Time saving.
 Easy to use
 Generate large amount of information cover all fields
 Provide refined or more precise results
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2. Tasks
Task 1: How to search general information with Google?
Unlike Facebook and Email, you don’t need to create a personal account and log in to use
them every time. What you need to do is just enter Google’s homepage and text whatever
you want to know in the search bar. Google will select the relevant information according
to what you have typed, and you can easily find the information you want.
Practice A: find the official web site of Newcastle University
Step 1: Type http://www.google.com in the address bar of your browser and
hit Enter.
Step 2: Type “Newcastle University” in the blank search box and hit Enter.
Tip: When you are typing, Google are also searching instantly. Google gives more
priority to pages that have search terms near each other and in the same order as the
query. Google can also match multi-word phrases and sentences. Therefore, the result is
much relevant to your query.
Step 3: Google will display a list of web sites as the result. And the most
relevant is displayed on the top. Each result contains the underlined name of
the web site, one or two lines of text which contains the query words, and web
site address showing at the bottom.
Step 4: According to the names of web site showing in the result, the first one
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3. is exactly the offical web site of Newcastle University. Clicking the underlined
link, you will be redirected to Newcastle University’s website.
Practice B: find tomorrow’s weather of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Step 1: Open Google’s homepage
Step 2: Type in the key words “Weather Newcastle upon Tyne” in the search
box and hit Enter.
Tip: Just type the keywords then Google will understand your query. You don’t have to
input the full query sentence.
Google has the function to display weather directly on the result page. You
will be able to see the today and the future days’ weather report.
Practice C: search images, videos, and other types of information
On the top of Google’s homepage, there is a series of information, such as “Web,
Images, Videos, Maps…”. It provides functions allowing you to search other types of
information. For example, let us assume here you want to search some images about
flowers.
Step 1: Open Google’s homepage and then click the link “Images” on the top.
Step 2: type the text “Flowers” in the search bar, then hit enter.
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4. You may see that only images about flowers are displayed.
Tip: If you want to search videos, news, books, blogs and other types of information, the
methods are similar. Firstly go to homepage of Google and then switch to the right
category by clicking the links on the top. If you cannot find some of the links, please try
click “more”.
Task 2: How to use Google Map?
Practice A: Locate Newcastle University from the map.
Step 1: Click the link “Maps” from the top of Google’s homepage
Step 2: Type “Newcastle University” in the search box and hit Enter.
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5. Step 3: The location of Newcastle University will be marked in
the map with balloon sign. To look in a small scale map, please
adjust the scale bar in the left side of the map.
Click cross sign (+) to zoom in and minus sign (-) to zoom
out.
Practice B: find the route from Newcastle central station to Newcastle
University.
Step 1: in the search box of Google, type “from Newcastle central station to
Newcastle University” hit Enter.
Step 2: The result is showed in two ways. In the left area of the page, Google
map gives the driving route by default. You have the options to switch walk or
public transport route. In the map view, you will see a purple line which
connects Newcastle central station and Newcastle University.
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6. Appendix I: What else can I do with Google Search?
You can also do the following things with Google Search (not limit to):
 Turn Google Into a Quick Calculator
 Translate web sites of another languages
 Looking for a stock quote.
 Find local cinema showing times
 Flight arrival and departure times in real time
Appendix II: Similar services: Wikipedia
Wikipedia: is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual
encyclopaedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia
Foundation. Its 18 million articles (over 3.5 million in English) have
been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and
almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the
site. Some noted the importance of Wikipedia not only as an
encyclopaedic reference but also as a frequently updated news
resource because of how quickly articles about recent events appear.
Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org/
If you want to use Wikipedia to search information resource, the general searching
process is like Google Search mentioned above. Go into Wikipedia’s homepage first and
type what you want to know in the search box. Wikipedia will find the relevant
information and display it in the webpage. You may browse the content and find what
you want.
Task 1: Find the history of Newcastle University
Step 1: open Wikipedia’s homepage http://www.wikipedia.org
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7. Step 2: Type “Newcastle University” in the search box and click the right
arrow to go to the result page.
Step 3: in the opened page, you can find a vertical navigation rectangle within
which the first index item is “History”. Click the “History” and you will be
redirected to the history section.
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