Stop Googling "What" questions. Googling "what were the causes of x,y,z?" or "why did Mr. X do x,y,z?" or Googling any similarly phrased question yields results that start with that phrasing. Often the results of searching with those terms leads to poorly written, inaccurate content on question and answer services like Yahoo Answers and Wiki Answers. Students who search using those terms quickly grow frustrated before ultimately saying, "Google doesn't have anything about this." One solution to this problem is to teach students to search for the subject of question, not the question itself. The better solution is in item #2 below.
Stop assigning research questions that can be quickly answered with a Google/ Bing/ Yahoo search.
Use the overlooked Google "advanced search" page. Previously located at the top of the page, the link to the advanced search page recently moved to the bottom of the Google results page.
Create Google Alerts. If there is topic that you or your students frequently search for, consider creating a Google Alert for that topic. You can create a Google Alert using any combination of search terms. Each time new content matching those search terms is indexed, the content or link (depending on your selection), is delivered to your choice of email or RSS reader.