Do you have too many or too few search results?
If you are working on a big topic, like mental health, you may see millions of search results at first, but you might notice that many of them aren't useful or aren't related to each other.
If you are working on a very specific topic, such as conservation efforts for the little brown bat population on Prince Edward Island, you might only get a few search results--or even zero search results.
Too Many Search Results
No Search Results
Too Few Search Results
If you have too many results
If you have too many results, and your search is bringing up mostly irrelevant sources, your topic may be too general. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to narrow it down and find more search terms to add:
- Who are you interested in? This could be a specific age group (such as teenagers), people with particular experiences or identities (such as parents or international students), or a particular type of animal.
- Why are you interested in this topic? For example, if you want to learn more about hospice nursing to better understand the working conditions of nurses, you'll search differently than if you want to better understand the experiences of hospice patients and their families.
- When would useful sources have been published? You can use the Publication Date limiter to make sure you're not only getting information from 2003.
- Where are you interested in? This could be a geographical location (such as Canada or Vietnam), a type of place (such as universities), or somewhere online (such as YouTube).
A librarian can ask questions to help you narrow down your topic, and they can help you update your search terms to focus on the most relevant sources.
If you have no/zero search results
If you are not getting any results, try the "Quick Fixes" listed on our search tips page. If that doesn't work, then there might not be any research on this topic yet! A librarian can double-check for you.
If you have too few results
If you are not getting a lot of results, your topic might be too specific. Research on similar topics could still be useful to you.
For example, your topic may be about Black people in Prince Edward Island who have experienced racism while working at fast-food jobs, but you can’t find anything on that topic. Then, you might need to broaden your search.
- In this case, consider losing one of your keyword terms, like focusing on islands in general instead of just Prince Edward Island.
- Your topic would then be about Black people on islands who have experienced racism working in fast-food jobs
- Or, you could look at BIPOC as a whole working in fast-food jobs to see if there is research on that.
- Your topic would then be about BIPOC on Prince Edward Island who have experienced racism working in fast-food jobs
- Or, maybe you would like to broaden to all jobs, instead of just fast-food, or all of Canada, instead of just Prince Edward Island.
- Your topic would then be about Black people on Prince Edward Island who have experienced racism at work, or about Black people in Canada who have experienced racism at fast-food jobs.
Sometimes you will need to go through a few searches to refine your topic. Sometimes you may need to change multiple parts of your topic, depending on what research exists out there. This is a normal process! Research is not always straightforward.
If you need help with your research topic, contact your subject librarian or your professor.