How to do more than just going to Google.com and typing what you are looking for? Read this guide.
Here’s a definitive guide to enhancing your experience with Google search. Kindly note that all parameters in italics below are search terms you can try in Google.
GENERAL SEARCH
1. Rely on keywords
Do not Google with sentences or questions. It does not help. Consider what would be the best keywords from the sentence and type in those for better results.
In case, you are unable to pick out keywords, try LetMeGoogleThatForYou. It is a service that analyzes your question and provides keywords to Google.
2. Search for exact words
If you are looking to search Google in a particular way, put your words within “”. This is Google’s phrase search.
It will return search results that contain the phrase. You can also use the plus (+) sign as an alternative to phrases.
eg. “Mahatma Gandhi was born” would return you results of this exact phrase search which means you would get Mahatma Gandhi’s birth date and birthplace.
3. Use the minus sign (-) to exclude terms
Consider excluding certain terms that appear as search results despite being unrelated to what you be looking for.
Use the minus (-) sign to inform Google to not include that word in search. Remember this will not effect the use of the minus sign as a hyphen.
eg. Google –search returns search results that list Google’s other services, excluding it’s well-known search engine.
4. Getting search results the “Fill in the blanks” way
To obtain results in a way that would allow you to answer a query by leaving a blank, all you have to do is specify the asterisk (*) symbol as the blank.
eg. Google Inc is based in * would return Mountain View, California in search results.
5. Search within a website
To search within a particular website only, you can use the site: keyword.
eg. India site:wikipedia.org will return the India page from Wikipedia as it’s top result as well as other India-related pages in Wikipedia.
6. Use OR while searching
To get results to allow either one or more words in search, use the OR operator.
eg. Toyota Germany OR Japan results Toyota-related news and websites from the countries.
SEARCHING FOR SPECIFICS
Here are the ways to search specifically for the following topics, and examples.
Weather Search
Type Weather New York to get current weather in New York City.
Movie Times
Type Movies London to get movie times in London cinemas.
Movie Reviews
Type Movie:Independence Day to get a list of movie reviews of the film. The word Music: can be used for music reviews of albums.
Last match scores
Type Manchester United to get the latest result of a football match played by the team.
Dictionary
Type define numerology to get definition of that word.
Map Search
Type map Australia to get Google Map results of the country.
Time
Type time Paris to see the time in Paris.
Stock Quotes
Type CSCO to get stock quotes of the company.
File Search
Add filetype:pdf after say Computer Basics to get any PDF documents available on the web.
Calculator
Type 25/55= to get the answer.
Currency Convertor
Type 10 USD in INR to convert 10 US dollars to Indian rupees.
Unit Convertor
Type 1000 CM in M to get the converted unit value.
Population and other public data
Type Population Argentina to get Argentina’s population as a search result.
Local results
Type Bangalore Chinese Food to get map results of restaurants in the city that serve Chinese food.
USE GOOGLE WITHOUT GOING TO THE WEBSITE
Install Google’s Chrome web browser to search from the address bar itself. Type your topic name and press Enter to search Google right away. Chrome’s unique Omnibox can be used in many ways. Read more here.
If you are a user of Mozilla Firefox, you can search from the Search Bar embedded within the navigation toolbar.
If interested in searching from the address bar, provide a keyword to search engines in the Search Bar on the top-right corner of your browser.
For example, provide ‘G’ as a keyword for Google. Next time you need to use Google search, type G India in the address bar to get search results for India from Google.
A similar search bar is available in the latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Related Reading: Search Google from your Instant Messenger
A Complete Guide To Google Search
Sunday, October 18, 2009
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2 comments:
What does 'I am feeling lucky' mean?
'I am feeling lucky' basically takes you directly to the first page of the results that would generate if you hit the 'Search' button.
It is basically Google's biggest goal - to get you exactly what you want without any kind of list provided or so.
Type 'Yahoo Mail' and hit the buttton to be taken directly to the Yahoo Mail page, hence reducing any need for other search options.
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