A Guide To Better Google Search Techniques. The Internet is so full of information that it’s nearly impossible to check its limits. That’s why, search engines were developed to maintain a search-able database of the web’s content. People employ the use of search engines to look up for information on the web. In the midst of all search engines lies Google, the most popular and powerful search engine. You type in the query, and the search engine provides you with the search results. In most cases you’re satisfied but sometimes, you’re not.
Why The Need To Learn Proper Search Techniques? Everyone including students, researchers, writers, etc. requires information, and they use search engines for that very reason. Better search resultsSaves your time Note: Search queries or examples are included inside [ ] for better readability. How To Use Google.com Google is a smart and intelligent search engine with many exciting features. Google’s version for your country might not support all the search techniques described below. 1. For example: A Comprehensive List of Advanced Search Operators. Blekko.com. Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine. Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine. Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine. 10 (More) Google Shortcuts to Hone Your Google-Fu. The Best Ways to Tweak Your Search When Google Doesn't Give You What You Want.
SymbolHound: Search Better. Code Better. Stuff You Didn’t Know Google Could Do Part 2 | Office Liberator. Craving some more awesome Google tricks? Here is the continuance of part 1. Enjoy! Filetypes If you want to search Google for just PDFs, Word documents, image files, or whatever, this will come in very handy. Fill in the blank / wildcards Number / time ranges This is helpful if you need to Google something within a certain time range. Proximity Search Search for related words Doing some research on assistants but want to to broaden the search results beyond the term “assistant”?
Search within a specific site If you need to search for something and you know it is in a certain site, use the site: operator. There are actually dozens more (e.g. searching through HTML), but these listed are definitely the most useful. Are there any other operators or Google tricks that I didn’t mention? 25 Killer Combos for Google's Site: Operator. There’s an app for everything – the problem is that we’re so busy chasing the newest shiny toy that we rarely stop to learn to use simple tools well.
As a technical SEO, one of the tools I seem to never stop finding new uses for is the site: operator. I recently devoted a few slides to it in my BlueGlassX presentation, but I realized that those 5 minutes were just a tiny slice of all of the uses I’ve found over the years. People often complain that site:, by itself, is inaccurate (I’ll talk about that more at the end of the post), but the magic is in the combination of site: with other query operators. So, I’ve come up with two dozen killer combos that can help you dive deep into any site. 1. site:example.com Ok, this one’s not really a combination, but let’s start with the basics.
Each combo in this post will have a clickable example (see below). I think we can all agree that 273,000,000 results is a whole lot more than most of us would want to sort through. 2. site:example.com/folder. Local Search - Google Places, Bing Local, Yahoo Local. Operators and more search help - Web Search Help.
You can use symbols or words in your search to make your search results more precise. Google Search usually ignores punctuation that isn’t part of a search operator. Don’t put spaces between the symbol or word and your search term. A search for site:nytimes.com will work, but site: nytimes.com won’t. Refine image searches Overall Advanced Search Go to Advanced Image Search. Search for an exact image size Right after the word you're looking for, add the text imagesize:widthxheight. Example: imagesize:500x400 Common search techniques Search social media Put @ in front of a word to search social media. Search for a price Put $ in front of a number. Search hashtags Put # in front of a word. Exclude words from your search Put - in front of a word you want to leave out. Search for an exact match Put a word or phrase inside quotes. Search within a range of numbers Put .. between two numbers.
Combine searches Put "OR" between each search query. Search for a specific site Search for related sites. Google Scholar. Scirus - for scientific information.