Have you at one point or another had to use the Google search engine box but got disappointed with the result you got? Maybe you wanted something very specific and ended up with ambiguous results.
This article will be especially helpful for students, online researchers and other internet users. So if you want to optimise search results without stress,
then you should totally read on.
Using Quotes (“”)
You may be looking to find specific words or phrase and to take it a notch higher, you could even search a whole sentence. The use of quotes in a search would help you reduce Google’s guesswork and bring up very specific results.
Searching May I Please will bring results on contents that contain the three words. But searching “May I Please” will bring you contents that contain these words together, exactly as you typed them.
So if you saw a glimpse of an article or a title, you could find that article by searching the words you remember in quotes.
Hyphen/Minus Sign (-)
The hyphen comes in handy when the word you intend to search is very ambiguous or is popularly related to something or someone which you don’t intend to search about.
An example will be searching bumblebee, you would get results and about the Bumblebee movie, which you don’t intend to read about. Making use of the hyphen will remove an article about the movie;
Bumblebee -movies
This way you can read about all other Bumblebee results that are not written about the movie. This could as well work for song titles. For instance, Starboy –Weeknd will get your content on “Starboy” not related to The Weeknd.
OR
Using OR could help you utilize the flexibility of Google search results. If you ever need to search for multiple words, OR comes in handy. You could include OR in searches to bring results on contents containing both words. Simply put, rather than doing multiple searches on different words, OR would help you search multiple words in one search.
Red OR Brown Checkered Shirts
This will fetch you results on both Red Checkered Shirts and Brown Checkered Shirts. You could also include the Quote tip above to search, like “Night Stands” OR “Night Lamps”. This way you get results for both Nightstands and Night Lamps.
Range of Numbers
If you ever have to search about something within a specific time or number frame, the ellipsis (…) could be best used. It could be used in searching prices, size, events and a lot more.
Champions League ..2003
Blue Suede Shoes 38..46
The first search will narrow down search results to only events of the 2003 Champions League. While the second result will bring results on blue suede shoes within the range of 38 to 46.
Using Asterisk (*)
This is especially useful when searching up lyrics and quotes you cannot fully remember. Placing an asterisk in a searched sentence will allow Google to suggest place fillers at the asterisk that would be best suitable and then bring out results.
“Make * great again”
“Not the * we wanted, but the hero we *”
This way you get results, even without knowing exactly what you are searching for, but you might still have to look for the exact result you need. Tip the missing words have to be less than 40% of the search input. If the intended result has 10 words, to get a meaningful result, you should have at least 6 correct words. This could be helpful in searching for quotes.
Keep it simple
You don’t always have to search for full sentences with question marks to get results. All you have to do is search the keywords in your query, as this will generally reduce the possible search results.
Rather than searching: “What is the best site to earn money from in 2021?”
You could simply search “Earn money online 2021”
Or to find hair salons around your area you could simply search “Saloons nearby”
You don’t always have to pay attention to spelling or capitalization to get results. Google will help you correct and bring results regardless of the capitalization used. You can also search math problems, unit conversions, track packages and specific information. Here are a few examples:
- Weather *city*/*zip code* - this will give you information on the weather in a city. Using a Zip Code might give more accurate weather status.
- 4*5643 – To solve math problems.
- 456USD to EURO to convert currency.
- 567KG to LBS to convert scale.
- Define *word* - To get definitions.
- Type stock ticker name for the stock price – TSLA will give you the current stock price of Tesla
- Place – Type in a place, *restaurant* and get the restaurants around you.
- #word – to get information on a trend.
- @*social media* - to search specific social media for results @twitter to search Twitter.
Google Search Engine tool is an extremely incredible research tool. Using the hacks above you can widen and narrow down search results to discover everything you might need on the internet. This way you can spend less time scrolling through search pages and Wikipedia and come up with better results for your searched essays, songs lyrics and even spend less time on shopping sites. This way you can make Google work for you.
Looking to get more tricks or having difficulty with these tricks, comment below.
Cheers!!🥂
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