Google Search Tips & Tricks

I have found one of the most useful skills an IT guy can have is the ability to find what we are looking for on the web very quickly. The key to that is being able to craft well-written Google queries. This seems like a skill that most people could benefit from, so I thought I would pass on some tips & tricks and quickly bring you up to black-belt status in navigating The Internets.

The Basics

• Every word matters. Generally, all the words you put in the query will be used.
• Search is never sensitive. A search for new york times is the same as a search for New York Times."
• Generally, punctuation is ignored, including @#$%^&*()=+[]\ and other special characters.

Keyword Tips

• Less is more - Simple, one or two word search terms will usually give you the broadest results. The goal of each word in a query is to focus it further. Since all words are used, each additional word limits the results. If you limit too much, you will miss a lot of useful information. The main advantage to starting with fewer keywords is that, if you don't get what you need, the results will likely give you a good indication of what additional words are needed to refine your results on the next search. For example, weather cancun is a simple way to find the weather and it is likely to give better results than the longer weather report for cancun mexico.
• Use descriptive words - The more unique the word, the more likely you are to get relevant results. Words that are not very descriptive, like 'document,' 'website,' 'company,' or 'info,' are usually not needed. So celebrity ringtones is probably better than celebrity sounds.
• Visualize what you’re looking for - Think how the page you are looking for will be written. A search engine is not a human, it is a program that matches the words you give to pages on the web. Use the words that are most likely to appear on the page. Keep in mind though, that even if the word has the correct meaning, if it's not the one most people use, it may not match the pages you need.

Search Operators

There are a handful of special characters or phrases you can add to your keywords that can provide some additional context or detail that will help Google find what you are looking for.

• Terms you want to exclude (-) - Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the query anti-virus software, the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the query anti-virus -software will search for the words 'anti-virus' but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the - sign in front of all of them, for example jaguar -cars -football -os.
• Fill in the blanks (*) - The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search Google * will give you results about many of Google's products (go to next page and next page -- we have many products). The query Obama voted * on the * bill will give you stories about different votes on different bills. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.
• Either Or (Or) - Google's default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type 'OR' in ALL CAPS). For example, San Francisco Giants 2004 OR 2005 will give you results about either one of these years, whereas San Francisco Giants 2004 2005 (without the OR) will show pages that include both years on the same page. The symbol | can be substituted for OR. (The AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.)
• Phrase search ("") - By putting double quotes around a set of words, you are telling Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without any change. Google already uses the order and the fact that the words are together as a very strong signal and will stray from it only for a good reason, so quotes are usually unnecessary. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for "Alexander Bell" (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.
• Search single word exactly as is ("") - Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the query child care (with a space), or California history for the query ca history. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don't really want it. By putting double quotes around a single word, you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it.
• Search for Keywords with Similar Meaning (~) - Instead of searching for only the given word, using ~ before the keyword you can instruct Google to search for web pages with the exact given word or synonyms of that word. For example, the query TSQL beginner ~tutorial will search for results containing 'TSQL beginner' along with the word 'tutorial' or other words with similar meanings (e.g. guide, manual, reference).
• Search within a specific website (site:) - Google allows you to specify that your search results must come from a given website. For example, the query ministry site:betenbough.com will return all pages about ministry but only from betenbough.com.
• Search by file type (filetype:) - Google allows you to search not just for web pages, but also for results contained in specific types of files, such as such as PDFs, PPTs, DOCs, or XLS. For example, filetype:pdf 2012 W4 will return only PDF files as results.

Other Fun Stuff

• Get the time - To see what time it is anywhere in the world, search time and the city or country. Example: time Nairobi
• Sports scores and schedules - Get scores and schedules for your favorite NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB teams simply by typing the team or league into the search box. Example: New York Yankees or Texas Tech Basketball or NFL
• Convert any measurement – Convert units or any measurement (e.g. miles to kilometers, ounces to liters) by typing in the number and unit of measurement. Example: 23.5 kg to pounds or feet in mile
• Find related pages (related:) - Sometimes it is easier to show Google a page that illustrates what you are looking for than defining what you are looking for in keywords. Use the related: operator to find pages that have similar content by typing related: followed by the website address. For instance, if you find a website you like, try using related:[insert URL] to locate similar websites. Example: related:simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_guacamole/

Other Resources

If this hurts your head, and you need an easier alternative to remember all this stuff ... Google Advanced Search might be a simpler approach that provides most of the advanced functionality described here.

Think you might not be able to remember all this stuff ... or want to go even deeper down the rabbit hole? There is a great Google Advanced Operators Cheat Sheet that can help you quickly remember the operator you need to use, or teach you about others that I didn't mention here.

Shortcut to Google Search

Instead of navigating to Google.com, then typing in your search ... you can just type in your keywords into the browser and hit enter.

If your browser doesn't send you to Google when you do this, but instead sends you to somewhere like Bing, you can change that behavior by setting Google as your default search provider.