Google and Google Scholar (like most other search engines) allow the use of Boolean search commands AND, OR, and NOT
Use Boolean commands along with parentheses and quotation marks to construct the most efficient search phrases
motor control TBI rehabilitation
((motor AND (control OR skill)) AND ("traumatic brain injury" OR TBI) AND (rehabilitation OR therapy))
The efficient search will be more effective because it will retrieve articles which use different words for the concepts that are being researched. Where the first search phrase will only retrieve articles with the word rehabilitation, the second search will in grab articles that use "rehabilitation" or "therapy". This effect is multiplied because the efficient search uses this technique of "OR"-ing synonyms together for each concept. The efficient search also uses quotation marks around multi-word phrases, which will tell a search engine that all three words must appear together. Without quotation marks, the search engine might retrieve articles with only single words from the phrase, returning lots of articles about the brain, or injuries in general.
Similar to using Boolean commands, "power" searching gives you the ability to be very specific when you search google.
specify that search results contain certain filetypes, search for synonyms of your search terms, or only come from websites with certain kinds of urls, like .edu or .gov
site:gov (children AND "traumatic brain injury")
In the above example, results will all be government resources or websites
"clinical trials" inurl:braininjury
In the above example, "braininjury" must occur in the url of the search results
"traumatic brain injury" filetype:pdf
The search in the above example retrieves only items of the specified filetype
~guidlines "traumatic brain injury"
The above exampleretrieves results with synonyms to "guidlines"
children ~guidlines inurl:"traumatic brain injury"
The above example retrieves results which contain words that are synonyms to "guidelines", and have the words "traumatic brain injury" in the ur
Portions of the information on power searching are based on information taken from University of Michigan Library’s Libguide Dentistry: Power Searching