How to better your search on Google
January 19th, 2010 • How To, Technology, Tips
Searching Google is as well known as typing your keyword, and hitting “Google Search” or the infamous “I’m feeling lucky”. But beyond just typing your keyword you can do much more, to get the results you want. Many argue that Google search results are only based on the words you type, but that statement is very false. Google can narrow down your search results based on the addition of even the simplest of characters and can be extremely useful if the searcher knows what they’re doing. There are a few tricks that can be used to narrow down your results.
Simplicity- Keep your search simple. If you’re looking for the specific name of a company, a person, or an item, just enter, for example, “my head hurts” or “headache”.
How will the content be written- Think about how the content of your search will be displayed on the website. Use the words that are most likely to be displayed on the page.
Fewest Terms- Use the fewest terms possible. Use keywords such as “headache” and “medicine” instead of “really bad headache medicine”.
Descriptive Words- Use the most descriptive words in your search criteria. For example, use “ringtones” instead of “sounds”.
If you are still having trouble finding the search results you are looking for, you can use another feature that Google search offers called “ Boolean searching”.
Phrase Searching- If you are searching for a specific phrase you can do so by searching with (“”) double quotes. For example, “Hershey Chocolate Bar” will search for the exact phrase.
Give it a shot: [“Hershey Chocolate Bar”]
Specific website Search- Google also features the option to search for content within a specific website. You can do so by entering a search term such as “technology” followed by the website’s URL with the syntax “site:nytimes.com”.
Give it a shot: [technology site:nytimes.com]
Terms to exclude- If you would like to exclude certain terms from your search, it’s as easy as typing a minus sign (-) directly next to the term.
Give it a shot: [technology –“blog” site:nytimes.com]
Terms to include- If you would like to include certain terms from your search, all you have to do is type a plus (+) sign directly next to the term.
Give it a shot: [technology +"blog" site:nytimes.com]
Fill in the blanks- You can use an asterisk (*) as a wild card when you are searching. This simple character acts as a placeholder for any unknown terms.
Give it a shot: [Clinton voted * on the * bill]
The Operator- The last term I will go over is the “OR” operator. When searching, you can use the “OR” operator. This operator will allow searching for specifically, the year “2004” or the year “2005”.
Give it a shot: [San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005]
