Are you new to Google’s web browser, Chrome? Are you wondering how to find and use Google search? Read on for a step by step by step guide on how to search using the chrome browser.
How to open the Chrome browser
This icon represents Chrome. If you click on this icon on your dock, desktop or in your apps, you will open the Chrome browser.
The first page that will open depends on your settings. Some people have Chrome set up to open at the Google Search page, other people have Chrome set up to open at their email account, or some other page. If Chrome on your computer does not open to the Google search page, you can type google.com into the URL address bar at the top of the window, and hit return.
You should now be at a page that looks something like this:
Overview of Google search using Chrome Browser
Starting at the top of the window, you should find the following items.
1 – URL / web address
The URL (web address) of the page that you are looking at. In this case https://www.google.com. To the left are four icons. The left-facing arrow will take you back to the previous page. The right-facing arrow will take you forward to the page. The arrow grey if it does not apply.
The circular arrow icon will refresh the page, requesting an up to date copy from the internet. The house icon will take you to your home page. Under the address bar, you will find the bookmark bar. The bookmarks bar contains links to web sites that you have chosen to be here. Other Bookmarks, at the far right in a folder, contains links to additional websites that you have chosen.
2 – Search bar
This is the section where you type in your search terms. As you type, Google will try to guess what you are searching for using autofill. If you want to search for a term that Google displays, just click on that term. (see the example below)
3 – Google account log in
The section in the upper right is where you may log in to a Google account if you have one. If your first initial, or picture, is in the upper right corner, you are logged in. Clicking on the 9 dots will display Google’s applications like Docs, Sheets, Drive. Clicking on Gmail takes you to your Gmail email account. A login screen will display if you are not signed in. You can search without being logged in to Google.
4 – Shortcuts
In this case, this area is blank, but as you use Chrome, it will display boxes here. They are short cuts to web pages that you have visited recently. You are not in control of what displays here, and it will change over time depending on your browsing habits.
How to search using the Chrome browser
To search for information, you will type in one or more words into the search bar (2. above). The choice of search terms is nuanced. You want words that are specific enough to find you what you are looking for, without being so specific that you miss some useful information.
In the example below, as one types “dog”, Google fills in the suggested search terms from “dogs” to “dogwood tree”. If you want one of those terms, click on it. If you want the exact term you typed, hit the return/enter key.
Results
Here are “dog” search results. To understand these results, we will start at the top of the page.
Google displays the search term.
Next are the categories of information that search results fall into. All, Images, News, Videos etc. “All” is highlighted. This shows the category displayed. To narrow the search, other terms can be clicked on.
Beneath that, is a count of how many web pages Google found that contain this term (over 1 trillion). It also shows how long it took Google to perform the search (1.75 seconds).
The Top stories section contains news articles that contain this term.
To the right of the page is a summary of the Wikipedia entry for “dog”
The majority of the page is a series of entries that represent the search results. Each result has a page name (in blue), the URL web address of the page and a brief piece from the page that shows the search term in the context of the page. Some of the search results contain additional words in blue at the bottom. These are links to other pages on that web site.
Ads are labeled if they are displayed in the search results.
To choose a result, review each entry to see if it is a reputable site (look at the URL web address) and if the use of your search term in the page seems to be what you are looking for. To go to one of the pages, click on the blue page name.