Did you ever experience this? You typed something to search for in google search but all irrelevant links showed up…
Well that’s because you have been searching the wrong way! Do you know that there is a complete course that trains people in “How to search on Google?”
There are certain methods which when followed can give accurate or close to accurate results. We can help you with disclosing a few important of them.
1. Use the tabs
The first tip is to use the tabs in Google search. On the top of every search are a number of tabs. Usually you’ll see Web, Image, News, and More. Using these tabs, you can help define what kind of search you need to do. If you need images, use the Image tab. If you are looking for a recent news article, use the News tab. It’s rudimentary and most people use the tabs already. If you are not, then it’s highly recommended to get associated with them. They can cut search times dramatically if utilized properly.
2. Use quotes/Keywords
When searching for something specific, try using quotes to minimize the guesswork for Google search. When you put your search parameters in quotes, it tells the search engine to search for the whole phrase. For instance, if you search for Puppy Dog Sweaters, the engine will search for content that contains those three words in any order. However, if you search “Puppy Dog Sweaters”, it will search for that phrase exactly as you typed it. This can help locate specific information that may be buried under other content if not sorted out correctly.
3. Exclude terms
If exact phrase doesn’t get you what you need, you can specifically exclude certain words using the minus symbol.
A search for “Joe Bloggs” -jeans will find results for Joe Bloggs, but it will exclude those results for the Joe Bloggs brand of jeans.
4. The power of the asterisk
Like the blank tile in Scrabble, the asterisk works as a wild card within searches. It can be used in place of a missing word or part of a word, which is useful for completing phrases, but also when you’re trying to search for a less definite article. A search for architect* will search for architect, but also architectural, architecture, architected, architecting and any other word which starts with architect.
5. Use a colon to search specific sites
There may be an instance where you need to Google search for articles or content on a certain website. The syntax is very simple and we’ll show you below.
Sidney Crosby site: nhl.com
This will search for all content about famous hockey player Sidney Crosby, but only on NHL.com. All other search results will be removed. If you need to find specific content on a particular site, this is the shortcut you can use.
6. Use Google search to do math
As a college student, I can attest that I use this one rather frequently. Google search can actually do math for you. This is a rather complex one to describe because it can be used in so many ways. You can ask it basic questions or some more difficult ones. It is important to note that it won’t solve all math problems, but it will solve a good number of them. Here are a couple of examples of the syntax.
8 * 5 + 5
Planck’s constant
If you search the first one, it’ll return 45. It will also show a calculator that you can use to find answers to more questions. This is handy if you need to do some quick math but don’t want to do it in your head. If you search the second term, it will return the number value of Planck’s constant. So it can do math, but it can also help you solve math problems by showing values for known mathematical terms.
Following these few tips can save your time and energy and prevent you from ending up on the wrong link every time you sit to use Google Search. I hope these tips can help you as much it has helped you.