Google is the most popular and definitely the smartest search engine in the world, but not many people know how to use it effectively. You can find literally everything on Google if only you know how to search. Otherwise, you may end up rambling about the SERP for hours. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your Google searches and use it like a pro.
- Use quotes to get an exact match
If you want to find a specific phrase, put it in quotes. For example, “how to make pasta” will return results that contain the exact phrase “how to make pasta”.
- Search within a specific site with site:
If you want to search for something on a specific website, use the site: before the keyword or question. For example, site:wikipedia.org will return results only from Wikipedia.
- Exclude a term from search results with -
If you want to exclude a term from your search results, use the “-” operator before a keyword. For example, "how to make pasta -meat” will return results that contain the phrase "how to make pasta” but not the word “meat”.
- Search images of a particular size with imagesize:
If you want to search particular size images, use the imagesize: operator. For example, imagesize:500x500 will return images that are 500x500 pixels.
- Search for a particular file type with filetype:
If you want to search for files of a particular type, such as PDFs or PPTs, use the filetype: operator. For example, filetype:pdf will return results that contain PDFs.
- Use wildcards * to make searches more flexible
If you're not sure about a specific term in your search query or you simply don’t know the exact search term, you can use a wildcard (*). For example, "the * of money" will return results that contain the phrase "the exchange of money", "the use of money", "the role of money", and so on.
- Combine searches with AND, OR, and NOT
You can combine search terms with AND, OR, and NOT to narrow down your results. For example, "React AND Angular" will return results that contain both the terms "React" and "Angular". "React OR Angular" will return results that contain either of the terms "React" or "Angular". And "React NOT Angular" will return results that contain the term "React" but not the term "Angular."
- Filter results by date with AFTER: and BEFORE:
If you want to filter your results by date, you can use the AFTER: and BEFORE: operators. For example, "React tutorials AFTER:2020" will return results that were published after 2020. And "React tutorials BEFORE:2020" will return results that were published before 2020.
- Find related websites with related:
If you want to find websites similar to a particular website, you can use the related: operator. For example, "related:google.com" will return results that contain websites similar to Google, such as Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.
- See Google's cached version of a website with cache:
If you want to see Google's cached version of a website, you can use the cache: operator. For example, "cache:www.facebook.com" will return the cached version of the website facebook.com.
These are just a few tips you can use to make search more effective and faster with Google. What about you? What trick do you use on Google?