5 Ways to Search Better on Google

Posted March 31st, 2009 by Brett | Filed under: Quick Tips | 2 comments

Search engines are the easiest and fastest way to find information or websites across the Internet. The problems start when you get 6,000,000 results back and it takes too long to find exactly what you want. Here are a couple quick tips to help you narrow down those listings:

Use double quotes (”") to tell Google exactly what you want
If you want to find pages about Bill Gates make sure to use: “Bill Gates” - that way it will only return pages where the word Bill is immediately followed by Gates. Be careful though, this method won’t find: Bill Henry Gates.

Use the plus sign (+) to add additional words
If you want to find pages where Bill Gates is mentioned along with his foundation search: “Bill Gates” +foundation. This will find any page where the phrase Bill Gates is on the page AND the word foundation is too.

The minus sign (-) can be just as helpful
If you don’t want to see pages about Microsoft just search: “Bill Gates” +foundation -microsoft. That way, any page with the word “microsoft” will be excluded.

Remember there are different types of searches on Google
Up on the top of the page of search results you can choose News, Images, Blogs, Video and more. If you are looking for news articles or mentions in blogs, make sure to select that section.

Choose the site you want to search
If you already know the site where the page is that you’re looking for then use site:domain.com. For example if you only want Bill Gates pages that are on microsoft.com then use: “Bill Gates” site:microsoft.com
Make sure that you don’t put a space after the colon.

These are just a few tips to help you save time and lower the frustration of searching through pages and pages of results.