Wikipedia:Advanced source searching
Essay on editing Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
 | This is an essay on notability. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article or a Wikipedia policy, as it has not been reviewed by the community. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Advanced source searching can provide more comprehensive search results compared to simpler standard searches. |
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.
Advanced search options
Niche search engines
- Google Advanced Search
- Kagi
- Marginalia – an index to marginal websites
Custom search engines
| Name | Project Page or Owner | Queries/day | Last update | Lowest-rated perennial source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GRel Source Engine[a] | User:Aaron Liu | 10 | March 2026 |  Generally reliable |
| Reliable Source Engine[a] | project page | 7 | March 2026 | Generally reliable |
| Wikipedia Reference Search | project page | 30 | October 2025 | Generally reliable |
| Reliable perennial sources | User:Barkeep49 | 2020? |  [1] Generally unreliable | |
| Reliable sources search engine | User:A Quest For Knowledge | ? | Generally unreliable |
| Advanced search for: "Search topic" | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
| ||
|
WikiProject/topic 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.
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.
- OpenAlex - OpenAlex is a bibliographic catalogue of scientific papers, authors and institutions accessible in open access mode.
More resources
By topic
- Identifying reliable sources (history)
- Identifying reliable sources (natural sciences)
- Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (science)
- WikiProject Food and drink/Tools/sources
By location
Entertainment
- Wikipedia:Record charts
- WikiProject Albums/Sources – recommended sources for music-related topics
- WikiProject Anime and manga/Online reliable sources
- WikiProject Board and table games/Sources
- WikiProject Christian music/Sources
- WikiProject Film/Resources
- WikiProject Professional wrestling/Sources
- WikiProject Video games/Sources
Medicine
Source searching
- The Wikipedia List of online newspaper archives – Very extensive and useful list of websites for finding sources
- List of free online resources
- List of search engines
- Specific uses of search engines in Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:New pages patrol source guide
See also
- Help:Find sources
- Wikipedia:Suggested sources – an essay
- Help:Searching – about searches within Wikipedia
- Criticism of Google § Possible misuse of search results
- Wikipedia:Overreliance upon Google – an essay
- Wikipedia:Reliable source examples – an essay
- Article Rescue Squadron Guide to saving articles – Includes source searching tips
- Wikipedia:Internet Archive print disability access – Access to additional Internet Archive sources
Notes
- News and advocacy sources only - narrower search results with some filtering-out of opinion and other pages that are not as useful or reliable.