Google Guide

A guide for Jaws users, written by Chorlton Workshop for hsbp.

Introduction

A search engine is a program for searching the web for pages which are relevant to a set of search terms. There are lots of search engines available, but Google is the best general purpose search engine, and its web address is www.google.com.

The remaining sections of the document are as follows. The searching section gives a basic outline of how to search, and there are then more detailed sections on the Google home page, results page, search terms, and preferences.

Searching

These are the instructions for searching from Google's home page. You can also search from any results page using one of the edit boxes.

1. Go to www.google.com.
2. The initial focus is the edit box for your search terms. So just press ENTER to go into forms mode, type in your search terms, and then press ENTER.
3. Google produces the first results page. A number of results are displayed on each page, and the results are ordered by relevance. At the bottom of each results page there are links to the other results pages.

A number of search options can be set on the preferences page, which is described in the preferences section. Of particular interest to Jaws users is the ability to set the number of results on each results page. The default number is 10, and normally, useful search results occur within the first 20 to 30 results. So setting the number of results per page to 30 saves you having to navigate between the results pages.

Home page

The page title is Google, and the page contents include:

• Edit box for search terms
• Preferences link. See the Preferences section.
• Search radio buttons. In the UK, you can choose between searching the whole web, or only pages from the UK. The default is the whole web, and this setting only applies to your next search.

Results page

Page structure

The page title is the search terms dash Google, and the page contents include:

• Edit box containing the search terms.
• Preferences link. See the Preferences section.
• Search radio buttons. In the UK, you can choose between searching the whole web, or only pages from the UK. The default is the whole web, and this setting only applies to your next search.
• Statistics bar, a line describing the search. An example of such a line is “ Web Results 1-30 of about 2,970,000 English pages for bbc radio4. (0.88 seconds)”
• Sponsored Links. Often, but not always, there's a section of sponsored links. This consists of a level 2 heading “Sponsored Links” followed by the sponsored links. Each of these sponsored links consists of a link to a web page followed by a short description.
• Search results. Each result starts with a level 2 heading which is also a link. The full structure of these results is given in the Search result section below.
• Links to other results pages.
• Edit box containing the search terms.

Navigating the Results page

The easiest way of reading through the search results is to navigate using the headings on the page. (Press H to move to the next heading, and SHIFT + H to move to the previous heading.) If there are Sponsored Links on the page, then the first heading is “Sponsored Links”. After this, each heading is the first line of a search result, and is also a link to a web page or a file.

Search result

A search result is normally for a web page, but can also be for a file — for example, a Word or PDF file. The format of a result for a web page is:

• A level 2 heading which is also a link to the web page, where the link text is the page title.
• A short extract from the web page which includes the search terms.
• The web address of the page.
• The size of the text on the web page.
• Cached link. A link to a version of the web page which was stored previously. Can be useful if the web site in down.
• Similar pages link.

The format of a result for a file is:

• A level 2 heading which is also a link to the file, where the link text is the file's title.
• The file format, for example Microsoft Word.
• View as HTML link, which takes you to a HTML version of the file.
• A short extract from the file which includes the search terms.
• The web address of the file.
• Similar pages link.

Search terms

Default treatment of search terms

• Search terms are not case sensitive.
• the web pages found by the search must include all the search terms.
• Automatic exclusion of common words. Words such as “where”, ”how”, certain single digits and single letters are excluded because they slow down the search without producing better results. If you need to include a common word, use either a phrase search, or the “+” search which are described in the following sections.
• Includes word variations. For example, if a search term is diet, then the word dietary will also be used as a search term.

Phrase search

To find pages which include an exact phrase, put quotation marks around the phrase. Note that your search terms can include other terms in addition to the exact phrase. Examples:

• “emily dickinson”
• “emily dickinson” biography
• “we all live in a yellow submarine”

Site search

To search a particular website, or websites whoose addresses have a particular ending, you can use the site: operator. For example “site:www.bbc.co.uk history” searches the BBC website for history, and “site:edu history” searches all websites whoose address ends in edu for history.

Negative terms

These can be useful if your search terms have more than one meaning. If you put a minus sign immediately before a term, then that term is avoided( You must leave a space before the minus sign ). For example, “apple ~computer” searches for apple but not computer.

Synonym search

To search for synonyms of a search term, rather than just the term, put a tilde ( ~ ) sign immediately in front of the term, and leave a space in front of the tilde sign.

Preferences

You can get to the preferences page by opening the preferences link on either the home page or a results page. If you make any changes, remember to press one of the Save Preferences buttons.

Navigating would be easier if it were well formated. If you have Jaws version 6 and above, then the keystrokes for finding and listing specific types of form control are useful. If not, then just use the keystrokes for finding and listing form controls.

Page contents

The title of the page is Preferences, and the contents of the page include:

• Save Preferences button.
• Interface Language section. The default is English.
• Search Language section. You can specify whether you want to search for web pages written in any languages, or only in a number of selected languages. The default is any language.
• SafeSearch Filtering section. Controls the filtering of explicit sexual material. The default is filtering of images, but not text.
• Number of Results section. You can set the number of results on each results page. The default is 10.
• Results Window. There is an option to display the search results in a new browser window. The default is off.
• Save Preferences button.

Setting the search language

There is a set of two radio buttons, with labels:

• Search Language Search for pages written in any language
• Search Language Search only for pages written in these languages(s):

Following the second radio button are large number of check boxes for specifying the languages you want, if the second radio is selected.

Setting the number of results

The number of results per page is set using a combo box with the label Display.