Use Google Smartly For Better Search Results

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Google Search Operators

1. Force keywords

Some times, not all words mentioned in the Google search bar come up in the search results. This is especially true for searches with many keywords. It suffices to say that it’s Google’s way of giving you the most relevant results. To force a certain keyword or phrase to be included in the search,

Try to use “+”(plus) sign. For example, Typing in “Hell Bound Blogger Pradeep”(w/out quotes) will bring some results without one or more of those words. If you need the word “blogger” (which is a common word and hence Google may leave it out) type “hellbound+blogger pradeep”.

2. Either/or.

Google normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use the OR operator or use the “|” symbol (pipe symbol) to save you a keystroke. [dumb | little | man]

3. Quotes.

If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes. [“dumb little man”] will only find that exact phrase. [dumb “little man”] will find pages that contain the word dumb and the exact phrase “little man”.

4. Not.

If you don’t want a term or phrase, use the “-” symbol. [-dumb little man] will return pages that contain “little” and “man” but that don’t contain “dumb”.

5. Similar terms (Synonym Search).

Use the “~” symbol to return similar terms. [~dumb little man -dumb] will get you pages that contain “funny little man” and “stupid little man” but not “dumb little man”.

6. Wildcard.

The “*” symbol is a wildcard. This is useful if you’re trying to find the lyrics to a song, but can’t remember the exact lyrics. [Can’t * me love lyrics] will return the Beatles song you’re looking for.

7. File types.

Use “filetype: Searchstring” before you search query. For Example “filetype:pdf” will fetch you only PDFs. “filetype:pdf Five Point someone” will fetch you all PDFs related with Fivepoint Someone novel. You can use this for any file types including ppt,doc,xls or anything you want.

8. Advanced search.

If you can’t remember any of these operators, you can always use Google’s advanced search. Google has an excellent advanced search facility to help refine your searching. Rather than replicate this here, a PDF document can be downloaded at [www.google.com/searchguide.html]. Click on Advanced Search Tips in advanced Search Screen for more tips.

9. Cached pages (Find lost pages).

Simply click on the cache link (at the bottom of each search result), and that will retrieve the last saved version of the page that had failed to show some times. This is a powerful, extremely helpful tool when you come across old pages from Web sites that no longer exist or are no longer maintained. These are stored in Google Servers. If some websites takes longer time to load we can open the content through Cache option.

10. Excluding Unwanted Results.

The “-” (minus) sign is used to exclude certain words from your search. If you want to search information about 3.0 SoapUI Version Details, you’ll probably get a lot of results about all the soapUI Software versions. Instead of “3.0 soapUI” try “3.0. soapUI -2.5 -2.0 -1.7 -1.6”.

11. Calculator.

One of the handiest uses of Google, type in a quick calculation in the search box and get an answer. It’s faster than calling up your computer’s calculator in most cases. Use the +, -, *, / symbols and parentheses to do a simple equation.

12. Numrange.

This little-known feature searches for a range of numbers. For example, [“best books 2002..2007”] will return lists of best books for each of the years from 2002 to 2007 (note the two periods between the two numbers).

13. Unit converter.

Use Google for a quick conversion, from yards to meters for example, or different currency: [12 meters in yards]

14. Definitions

Use the “define:” operator to get a quick definition. [define:dumb] will give you a whole host of definitions from different sources, with links.

15. Putting Document titles to use

“allintitle”searches for pages that have all your search words in the title of the web page. So if you want sites that have “microsoft” and “knowledge” in the title type in “allintitle:(space) microsoft knowledge”….or even try “allintitle: fun net”..[Without quotes]

16. Searching by URLs

You can also search for terms that occur in the URLs of documents. For example, if you want to find the word “mac” in the sites that have “apple” in the URL, where “mac” may or may not be in the URL, use this “inurl:applemac”…the word apple will then be in the URL. Note that there should be no space between “inurl” and “apple”.

There are many more, so start googling smartly and use it to Max 🙂

This guest article is written by Malini Mohankumar. She has over 10 years of experience in IT of which development, testing and project management. Major profession is Software testing and project management utilizing mainly Microsoft’s technologies. If you wish to write a similar guest article, you can check our guidelines regarding it.

48 thoughts on “Use Google Smartly For Better Search Results”

  1. Pingback: Host Tip #2: Domain's History Affects Google's Trust

  2. wow, i didn’t know that there other ways to search through google. I just usually type the keyword but there’s a lot more to it.

    Reply

  4. Use this searchengine. It has all the features that you said embedded with it

    http://www.soople.com/
    .-= sudharsan @ technoskillonline’s last blog…Win Dell Inspiron Laptop Free – Sizlopedia Contest =-.

    Reply

  5. These are nice tips to search content on Google, otherwise searching the content on google is very tough

    Reply

  7. Now Started Addressing Everyone by Name, Bhai or Bhaiya sounds odd as this blog and others too are universal reading material! (- ^)

    thanks! Malini, i learned some more things about google, many i knew, but great post…

    Reply

  8. Pradeep, sadly, I don’t understand what do you mean by this “I am not sure you are aware or not but I would like to suggest and tell your that your blog has using ‘Title’ Tag. May be you are using your in perspective of SEO, but use of Title attract the user and search in many manners” (the comment you posted on my blog). I should really admit that I am not good at SEO, blogging, and computer-related stuffs, lol.. Do you mean the tag is too common sense? I even do not realize how I created the tag, lol.. Please tell me a bit more.. Thanks!

    Reply

    • Yasinta Yasinta ! (~_^)

      That comment was not made by me ! 😀 That was made by someone named “Suresh” !

      This was the comment made by me, “Yasinta… are u an entrepreneur ? Going to start your own business in Blogging Field ? ”

      SEO is as simple as blogging.. and you don’t need to worry about it much ! You don’t need to tweak any codes, just install “All in one SEO” plugin.. just google for it ! 😉

      Reply

      • Oops.. Thanks Pradeep! I must be in rush that I didn’t read the name carefully. Have been very busy during the recent months and don’t have much time to manage my blog. Sorry to confuse you, :?#!!!@! And thanks for the explanation. I just didn’t get into what Suresh wrote.

        Reply

  9. It’s a nice revision for all our bloggers who have been using google for long time 🙂 🙂 🙂
    Thanks Malini 🙂 🙂

    Reply

  17. I did not know about the numrange. But, after thinking about it, I can’t imagine myself ever using it 🙂

    Reply

    • yeah:-)!

      I am miserable in converting units and now google is become handy. At times i feel that google is making all of us lazy by giving answers in fracion of second and these days we are not using any manual methods or formulas. Even school going kids are using google :-).

      Reply

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