Wikipedia:Advanced source searching

Advanced source searching can provide more comprehensive and accurate search results compared to simpler standard searches, which can be useful for the assessment and determination of topic notability. Customizing searches to narrow results, using other search engines besides Google, and the general customization of search parameters can often provide several and sometimes many additional reliable sources that are not included in basic searches, such as those using Wikipedia's Find sources template.

Search parameters

 * Boolean searches and other custom searches can provide links that are not available in default searches. Simply using quotation marks in searches (e.g. "Search topic") can significantly narrow search results, whereby only results that have the entire term are generated.
 * Customizing searches using your preferred search engine (for instance Google or DuckDuckGo) by simply adding "news" or "news," (both without quotation marks) and then the search term in quotation marks offers results different from the dedicated "news" tab. Quality, quantity and recency vary. It's often necessary to view several pages after the first page of search results when using this technique.
 * Advanced search options in various search engines (like DuckDuckGo or Google) can help to pinpoint coverage about topics.
 * To narrow searches to specific sites, here's something that works in DuckDuckGo and Google searches (be sure to include the topic in quotation marks): "Search topic" site:www.siteexample.com This generates results only from the specified site.
 * To search within a top-level domain or generic top-level domain, a "site" parameter can be added. For example: "Search topic" site:*.ro lists websites under the .ro generic top-level domain.
 * Omitting results by adding a minus (-) sign and url addresses for unwanted sites can result in higher-relevance hits (or at least higher relevance hits per Wikipedia's notability standards, to omit sites that aren't valid for demonstrating topic notability) – e.g. "Search topic" - siteexample.com.

Niche search engines

 * Google Advanced Search
 * Marginalia – an index to marginal websites

Custom search engines
Search for expanded template

Indian newspapers searches

 * English Newspaper Custom Search Engine - For more information, see WP:INDAFD.

Wikiproject custom search engines

 * Some WikiProjects have their own custom Google search, to sort through websites they have agreed to be reliable sources. This often shows ample results that a Google news archive search does not. See examples below.
 * WikiProject Video games/Search engine – This Google Custom Search is used by WikiProject Video games.

Scholarly works

 * Internet Archive Scholar - The fulltext search index includes over 25 million research articles and other scholarly documents preserved in the Internet Archive.
 * Semantic Scholar - Semantic Scholar is an artificial intelligence–powered research tool for scientific literature.

By topic

 * WikiProject Food and drink/Tools/sources – a list of recommended sources for food- and drink-related topics
 * WikiProject Albums/Sources – recommended sources for music-related topics
 * WikiProject Christian music/Sources – recommended sources for Christian music
 * WikiProject Video games/Sources – recommended sources for Video games
 * WikiProject Professional wrestling/Sources – recommended sources for Professional wrestling
 * WikiProject Korea/Reliable sources – recommended sources for Korea-related topics
 * Identifying reliable sources (history) – History -related topics
 * Identifying reliable sources (medicine) – Medicine -related topics
 * Identifying reliable sources (natural sciences) – Natural sciences -related topics
 * WikiProject Football/Fully professional leagues – usable as an aide in considering the WP:NFOOTBALL guideline for Association football
 * Medicine related topics:

Source searching

 * The Wikipedia List of online newspaper archives – Very extensive and useful list of websites to find sources at
 * The Wikipedia List of free online resources page – provides many resources for source searching
 * The Wikipedia List of search engines article – provides a list of additional search engines that can be utilized.
 * Specific uses of search engines in Wikipedia