Google Search Tips for Better Results
You probably perform a few dozen Google searches a day. Unless you’re us. We probably do a few dozen an hour!
You type in a few words, hit enter, scan the results for a second, reword your search phrase, hit enter again and repeat until you find what you’re looking for.
What you may not know is exactly how precise you can be with your search terms, all without ever having to click the somewhat hidden Advanced Search feature.
You do know about the Advanced Search feature, right? Hey, it doesn’t matter we’ll show you how to do it straight from the search box.
[div]1. Search for a specific word or phrase
Wrap your query in quotation marks. Then it limits the query to the exact wording. “Center Street Cafe” instead of Center Street Cafe.
2. Search only specific sites or domains
Say you know your search is relevant to just a specific site, like Microsoft. You can limit your search query to just that site. Surface Review site: microsoft.com
3. File types
If you’re are after a powerpoint, PDF, Word document you can narrow your results to a specific kind of file. eat bacon filetype:ppt
4. Exclude Words
Maybe there is a certain word you would like to exclude when you search. Just type your search word followed by a minus sign. Coffee – ice cream
5. Search a date or number range.
Looking for a product and only want to pay a certain price. Well, you can narrow down that search with this simple tip.
6. Use an Asterisk
This tip harkens back to a lot of programming languages. Search for a phrase in quotes with an asterisk will replace a word with all variations of that phrase. For example “* is thicker than water”
7. Find a page that links to a page
This is a little obscure and I’m not sure what you might use it for. We use it daily in our SEO work. Instead of search for a specific page, you’re really searching for a page that links to a specific page. Try to wrap your head around that. link:centerstreetcafe.com
That will return all pages that link to the Center Street Cafe website.
There are plenty of others. Track your packages. Unit conversions. Do you have any other Google search tips? Do you use something else for search besides Google?
Google search is a very powerful tool. So use it wisely.