Google Search: Tips and Tricks

The term "google it!" has become somewhat synonymous with that moment when what you need to know is not in your head. Whether your boss asks you to do something, and you just don't have a clue or whether you just want the definition of a word, we all tend to fall back on this phrase that has, very much so, become a part of our daily lives.

But do we use the Google search engine to its full capacity? Below are a few tricks and tips that can help you in your next google search to narrow the millions of search results down to the specific ones you're looking for.


1. Exact Phrases
One of the most basic and widely known search tricks is using quotation marks to search for an exact phrase. For example, perform the following search and you’ll only get pages that contain the word “Hello” followed by the word “World.”

2. Exact Words
This same method now works for exact-word queries. For example, if you search for colourfu’ Google will also show pages that contain all derivatives of that word, eg coloured or colored. Now if you search for “colourful”, you search only for that word and not all its derivatives. The literal search exact is only applied to the word(s) in quotation marks. recognise "colourful" flowers – will return results which contain colourful’, but will include results for the word recognize.

3. Verbatim
Switch on the Verbatim option under ‘More search tools’(Google search page bottom left) to get the same effect. eg searching recognise colourful flowers without verbatim switched on will also return results for recognize colorful flowers. With verbatim switched on, all word in the search term are taken literally.

4. Excluding a Word
The minus sign allows you to specify words that shouldn’t appear in your results. For example, if  you’re looking for pages about Linux distributions that don’t mention Ubuntu, use the following search: linux distributions -ubuntu

5. Site Search
The site: operator allows you to perform a search in a specific site. Let’s say you’re looking for information on Windows 7 on How-To Geek. You could use the following search site:howtogeek.com windows 7

6. Related Words
The tilde (~) operator is the opposite of enclosing a single word in quotes — it searches for related words, not just the word you type. For example, if you ran the following search, you’d find search results with words similar to geek: ~geek

7. The Wildcard
The asterisk (*) is a wildcard that can match any word. For example, if you wanted to see what companies Google has purchased and how much they paid, you could use this search: “google purchased * for * dollars”

8. Date Range
A little-known search operator allows you to specify a specific time range. For example, use the following search to find results about Ubuntu from between 2008 and 2010: ubuntu 2008..2010

9. Filetype
The filetype: operator lets you search for files of a specific file type. For example, you could search for only PDF files. filetype:pdf how to geek

10. One Word or the Other
The “OR” operator lets you find words that contain one term or another. For example, using the following search will pull up results that contain either the word Ubuntu or the word Linux. ubuntu OR linux

11. Word Definitions
You don’t have to Google a word and look for a dictionary link if you want to see its definition. Use the following search trick and you’ll see an inline definition: define:word

12. Calculator
Use Google instead of pulling one out or launching a calculator app. Use the +, -, * and / symbols to specify arithmetic operations. You can also use brackets for more complicated expressions. Here’s an example: (4 + 2) * (6 / 3)

13. Unit Conversions
The calculator can also convert between units. Just type X [units] in [units]. Here’s an example: 5 nautical miles in kilometers

14. Etymology
If you want to know the origin of a word or phrase you can use this request. etymology: geek

15. Plot Curves
You can even plot curves by searching for the formula e.g. search for sin(x)

16. Google Map
Another quick trick is type in an address or crossroads and get a Google map of the point or points . 1234 mystreet , town,province and Google will give you a map.

17. Airplane Flights
And searching [city] to [city] will show all the flights available along with most of the info. Try  searching- Colombo To Bangkok Combine these search operators to create more complex queries. Want to search a specific website for a PDF file, created between 2001 and 2003, that contains a specific phrase but not another phrase? Go ahead.