4 useful search extensions you would be silly to go without while studying

Writing essays can be a drag, right? You have to trawl through pages and pages of books and websites to find the one paragraph, or even few words, which are relevant to you.

If you are searching online, there can often be a mass of information, it’s hard to narrow down what you need. Sometimes you are searching for the source of a text or photograph, or you need to find more pages similar to the one you are looking at. The Internet can be a tricky beast. With so much information it’s tough to know what is legitimate.

Sometimes you just need a bit of help. And it’s not just students, educators struggle too. That’s why Educator’s Technology have compiled a handy list of sites for teachers. For those who use Google Chrome, these extensions will be just as useful for savvy students.

1. Google Scholar

This smart little tool will help you search for academic papers at ease. It will grant you easy access to all relevant academic articles, papers, and journals you need while sifting through the ones you don’t. You will be able to “find full text on the web or in your university library” as well as change your search from the Internet to Scholar, and it will help you format and reference in most citation styles.

How have I got to the third year of my Masters without knowing about or using Google Scholar?!? #amazing #Masters @OUstudents #lifechanging

— Gemma Silk (@silkychina) November 12, 2017

2. TinEye Reverse Image Search

Found an image but can’t find its original source? TinEye is an ingenious extension which allows users to search images and locate where they come from and how they are used. “TinEye creates a unique and compact digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ for it [the image], then compares this fingerprint to every other image in our index to retrieve matches.” The extension locates all images which match it even if they have been cropped, edited or resized.

#beduc476 I used TinEye Reverse Image Search to find the source of images that I forgot where I saved them. It's simple to use.

— martianc (@yiu_christine) October 30, 2017

3. Google Similar Pages

It’s in the name: this extension searches for webpages similar to the one you are currently looking at. All you need to do is click the ‘Similar Pages’ button and your browser will bring up all the pages which resemble the one you are currently on.

4. Search by Image

This extension was made by the Google Images team. It allows you to search the web using an image instead of text. So, if you have an image which is relevant to your essay or research you can use the ‘Search by Image’ extension to bring up a plethora of helpful webpages and sources related to it.

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