As a starting point I just put the whole question as it is which got me 31,900,000 results. To narrow it down I tried the verbatim tool which gave me 13,800 results. This got me a lesser amount of results, but the information on the websites were not as relevant as I would like them to be.
Next, I put in ""fiscal cliff" AND democratic AND republican" which got me 159,000,000 results. No bueno. So I tried refining this search by selecting results in the past month which got me 62,000,000 results. These results were a little more relevant and some results did contrast democratic and republican positions. Then I tried using the verbatim tool again, but unfortunately it gave me 64,000,000 results which was more than I wanted.
Then, I tried searching "fiscal cliff democratic republican differ" which gave me 79,000,000 results. To refine this I used the past month search tool which gave me 473,000 results that were somewhat relevant to my research question. Just for fun, I used the same phrase except I used the translation search tool. Pages translated from French actually gave me 33,600 results even though the translations were horrible.
Lastly, I tried searching the same phrase up above while using a specific site. I tried the major news sites such as CNN, The New York Times, and Washington Post. CNN got me 46,700 results but focused more on the republican side of the issue. The New York Times got me 60,600 results which had some results that were relevant to the research question. Washington Post got me 46,400 results with the most diverse pool of results. I narrowed the search even further for the Washington Post results using the past month search tool which got me 5,820 results.
Then, I tried searching "fiscal cliff democratic republican differ" which gave me 79,000,000 results. To refine this I used the past month search tool which gave me 473,000 results that were somewhat relevant to my research question. Just for fun, I used the same phrase except I used the translation search tool. Pages translated from French actually gave me 33,600 results even though the translations were horrible.
Lastly, I tried searching the same phrase up above while using a specific site. I tried the major news sites such as CNN, The New York Times, and Washington Post. CNN got me 46,700 results but focused more on the republican side of the issue. The New York Times got me 60,600 results which had some results that were relevant to the research question. Washington Post got me 46,400 results with the most diverse pool of results. I narrowed the search even further for the Washington Post results using the past month search tool which got me 5,820 results.
In conclusion, I think using the past month search tool was the most useful in narrowing down my results. Also using specific trustworthy news sites allowed me to get results that had more pertinent information than other websites.
