The United States Government produces statistics and data that can be used in almost any research project. Government statistics can provide a starting point for research or they can support a well argued point. This guide provides a gateway to many statistical and data sources produced by or using government information.
One of the biggest issues with using Google is the amount of results you must go through. Some searches result in thousands of pages. Who has time to go through all that? Did you know you can manipulate a regular Google search with a couple of hacks to get better results? It's true! Try these search hacks with your next Google search.
site:XXXXX This search tells Google to limit your search to a particular site or domain. For instance, if you limit to site:msjc.edu you would only search MSJC's site. Similarly, site:.gov would search only sites ending in .gov, and site:.edu would search only sites ending in .edu.
-XXXXX Adding a minus/hyphen sign in front of a term will remove results with that term. This can be very helpful when removing common words associated with your topic.
filetype:XXXX Using filetype: will only find certain file extentions (.doc, .pdf, .ppt, etc)
"XXX XXXX" Putting double quotes around a phrase will find only that phrase, with the words together and in exact order.
You can also combine some of these search hacks, such as adding -site:nytimes.com to remove results from the New York Times website.
Check out more search tricks at UC Berkeley Library's Google Search Made Easy Guide.