Google Tools Allow Custom Searches; Ivener & Fullmer Releases Tips on Navigating USCIS Web Site
Google Custom Search Engine allows a user to create a customized search engine using Google technology and the user’s own customized index. At Google Scholar, the user can search using any language or a specified language. Google search tips can be found here, and a listing of special features and what they can be used for is posted here.
On November 1, 2006, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that it had replaced its existing Web site with a “new and improved” site that promised to offer “easier access” to immigration information. Unfortunately, many users have disagreed. The new site has buried popular pages in nooks and crannies difficult to find for most searchers. If you’re having trouble navigating the revised USCIS Web site, these tips might help:
- Google: The Google search engine is sometimes better at finding relevant pages than the USCIS Web site’s own search engine. You can use Google’s advanced search to “only return results from the site or domain” or search the keywords that you want, followed by “site: uscis.gov”.
- Customer Guides: If you are looking for a specific page, another option is to start with a general category on the Customer Guides page, and navigate to the page you need from there.
- Old USCIS Web site: Yet another method if you are looking for a specific page that you used before the change is to use the old Web site address at http://149.101.23.2. Beware, however, that this site has not been updated since October 30, 2006, so you should only use this site if you know that the information has not changed since then.
