How to Google like a pro?

Have you seen the number of results and time taken in any Google search?

This is to simply show the searchers that they have that number of pages indexed for that keywords and they can quickly fetch results for you.

While Google gives you 100 million+ results for your search in about 0.xx seconds, there are some cool tricks to give you even more better search results. Here, in this blog, I’ve provided 19 top useful tricks including a few bonus tricks that make internet users feel “wow”.

1. Search for exact Quote or Phrase

If you wish to search a particular phrase, Google returns a different result sometimes understanding that you have misspelled a word. But, according to you, that was exactly what you were searching for!

This happens mostly when you search phrases or sentences in poems, novels,songs, etc. To avoid this, you can use double quotes outside the phrase. This lets Google know that the phrase entered is exactly what you want.

In this example, I am searching for “ New paper “, which is the second most-read English news paper in Singapore (As per Nielsen Media Survey, 2008). But, the result i got is different. Google assumes that i have misspelled the phrase for “news paper”.

So, i used “new paper” in my search term. Now, Google gives me the exact match for the search term.

"YOUR PHRASE"

2. Avoid Unwanted Words in search results

This is a very useful method to eliminate any unwanted terms in search results. For example, this may be helpful when you are searching for a specific way to solve a math problem, without using “xyz” formula. You can do this by entering the search term followed by the term that you don’t want google to show prefixed with hyphen(-).

YOUR SEARCH TERMS -avoid_this_word_1 -avoid_this_word_2 -avoid_this_word_n ('n' in above line stands for 'n' number of words to avoid in search results)

Another example can be like, if you are interested to know about the recent books published, and do not wish to buy them, you can use “Recently published books -buy”.

In this picture below, you can see the priority is given to sites like Amazon to allow us purchase certain books.

To avoid this, i have used certain unwanted terms like “buy”, “amazon”, “flipkart” and so on, so that google doesn’t prioritize results containing those terms.

3. Don’t worry about forgotten words!

If you have listened to a song and you need to know about that song, you search Google by typing that song name, or if you don’t know the name, you simply type any line of the lyrics. But, what if you do not remember few words in that line too?

Google now allows you to search for phrases or sentences, even if you’ve forgotten certain words. All you need to do is use a ‘*’ at the place of unknown words.

KNOWN WORD * KNOWN WORD

I need to search for a song of Eminem, but i remember only few words of a line from that song. So i used * in place of unknown words and, i got the desired result!

4. Search for results from a Specific Website

For example, there maybe a need that you need clarifications for your doubts only from Wikipedia. If you have these kinda search to be done, you can do this in Google Search easily!

If you want search results from a specific site, you can use:

site:WebsiteDomainNameAlongWithTopLevelDomain YOUR_SEARCH_TERMS

In the below screenshot, i have searched for “Generation of computers”. As i need results only from Wikipedia, i used “site:wikipedia.com Generation of computers”.

5. Search for Specific File type

Imagine its your semester exams that are going on and you need contents to read from pdf files. A simple google search can’t bring you all pdf results as it may contain many unwanted file types, video links, etc.

To search for any specific filetype, just use:

YOUR_SEARCH_TERM filetype:extension

I need contents of a subject “Engineering graphics” as a pdf file. So i searched this way:

6. Search terms in Title of Web Page

If you need to get the results of websites that have the search term as their title, use:

intitle:YOUR_SEARCH_TERM (Remember:No space after colon)

Similary, search terms in urls can also be retrieved. This is done by:

inurl:YOUR_SEARCH_TERM

7. Search for Alternative sites

There is always an alternative for anything in this world. Find the most similar or relevant alternative sites using:

related:DomainNameAlongWithTopLevelDomain

The result for sites alternative to Amazon.in is given below.

8. Search within a specific Time Frame

Lets assume that you need to get a list of events that occurred during a certain period of time, from 1990 to 2020. You can get these kinda information through google search easily.

YOUR_SEARCH_TERM Start_time_frame...End_time_frame

For example, i need to to find best android phone at a price between Rs.10,000 to 20,000.

9. Track your orders in Google search

There’s no more need to enter the website or app of the company from which you ordered something, to track its arrival. Instead, you can just enter your unique tracking number in Google search textbox and you can find the required details.

This works with UPS, USPS and Fedex. This is highly helpful as you don’t need to enter into the site or app every time just to check your product status.

10. Reverse Image Search

Reverse Image Search is one of the best search techniques for pictures. If you have an image with you, and if you wish to know the origin of that picture, you can just upload that image in Google.

This result contains similar images from various websites as well as other relevant images too.

Other than these 10 tricks, there are few more Bonus tips as well!

Bonus tips:

1) Math calculator — Google search itself acts as a calculator, making calculations instant and easy.

2) Timer & Stopwatch — You can instantly set a timer or start a stopwatch inside google search.

3) Flip a Coin — This randomly shows output of a coin toss(Heads or Tails).

4) Roll a die — Gives random dice answers!

A Few More…

• Currency Converter
• Measurement converter
• Translator
• What’s my ip? (This gives your public IP address)
• Type “Askew” and see the weird tilted screen 🙂

Are there any tricks that have been left out? Share it in the comments section so that we can learn many new tricks to simplify our search process.

These tricks are definitely going to be useful, if you try using them. At once you start using these tricks, you, without your own knowledge, start saving time! And it’s true! I have experienced it. #CodingThing

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Originally published at http://codingthing.wordpress.com on January 23, 2020.