How To Research Like a Sleuth

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Please do your research. Whether you are a Transcriber, QA, or Reviewer, it is your job to research any names, products, companies, or terminology you come across in your work. However, sometimes you must be a bit creative in your Google searches to find what you are looking for. It's all about context and keywords.

Note that bold, colors, and curly brackets are for illustration purposes only; DO NOT format live files in this manner.

Context is Crucial

Look for keywords that will help in your search, especially in the sentences surrounding your elusive word or phrase and the overall subject matter of the audio. For example:

In the above example, we want to find John's last name. From context, we know he is an author who just published a book called Camino Island. Search {author of Camino Island} and you will find it was written by John Grisham.

Search {Phoebe Novakovik} and you will find that her name is actually spelled Phebe Novakovic, and she is the CEO of General Dynamics. But whoops! It probably isn't a Forting 500 company. Try searching for {Forting 500 company}. Google automatically suggests the correct answer: Fortune 500 company.

Guessing Phonetically

When you can make a reasonable phonetic guess, use what you think the term sounds like as a keyword in your search. You can also use Google's mic feature to sound it out and see what Google can come up with. This doesn't always work, but it's another trick to have up your sleeve.

Searching {glaucoma tonal pen} will bring up the Tono-Pen, a tonometer used in checking ocular pressure.

Don't Forget Context!

Make sure your search results make sense with the context of the conversation.

Quotation Marks Yield Exact Matches

If you're going to learn only one tip, this is the most useful one to learn! When you place quotes around two or more words, Google will search for pages that include those exact words, in that order.

If you type {John Smyther} into Google, your top results will be pages with John Smythe, John Smyth, etc. But when you type {"John Smyther"} (in quotes), Google will display results that have exactly John Smyther, omitting all the other possible variations of the name.

If you type {Group Dental} into Google, you will get many results with Dental Group. But when you type {"Group Dental"} (in quotes), Google will display only results with the words in that order.

You can also put single words in quotes. This prevents Google from searching and displaying variants of that word. For example, if you type {"managed"} as one of your words in the search box, you will get results that only include managed, NOT management, manager, etc.

Advanced Search Tips

Most of the time, the above tips and tricks will be all you need to do; however, when they don't produce what you're looking for, there are some additional Google search tips that may help you, particularly when you need to narrow the results to make them more relevant to your search. Although there are many search operators and modifiers, the following two are the most useful for typical searches done for TM work.

Use an Asterisk as a "Wild Card"

Use an asterisk ( * ) as a wild card of sorts to find suggestions for [inaudible] words within a specific phrase. Google basically treats the asterisk (with a space on either side of it) as a placeholder for one or more variable words. When used with the quotes to narrow your search, a search with the asterisk will also include results with a variety of extra words or phrases that fit within that phrase.

Search {"Obama voted * on the * bill"} ← notice the asterisks and quotation marks! This will give you results such as, "Obama voted yes on the comprehensive immigration reform bill," variations of that exact phrase with the added bonus of filling in potential unknown or variable words.

Use a Minus Sign to Exclude Certain Results

On the flip side, you can use the minus sign ( - ) to remove or omit specific words from your search. When you place a minus sign immediately before a word (without a space), Google will eliminate results containing that word.

In this example, let's say you're searching for a company called Matrix and you don't have much context other than it's a tech company based in Canada. Your initial search generates a lot of unwanted results related to a movie, a hair care line, mathematics, etc. If you redo your search as {Matrix -movie -hair -math}, or possibly {Matrix Canada technology -movie -hair -math}, those unwanted results will be excluded.

Location-Based Searching

One other little tip about research. If you are trying to do a Google search for a company, product, person, etc. from outside of your country, you can get a better, more targeted, result by adding the country into the search window or by using the regional Google domain - for example, google.ca (Canada), google.co.nz (New Zealand), google.co.uk (United Kingdom). And if you aren't sure what the domain address is, you can use this list.

Happy researching!