Every day, millions of individuals use Google search for a wide range of purposes. Millions more use it for leisure while millions more use it for research in business. But it’s possible that most people aren’t making the most of Google search.
1. Use the tabs
Use Google search’s tabs is the first point of advice. Each search has a number of tabs at the top. Web, Image, News, and More are typically displayed. You can use these tabs to define the type of search you need to conduct.
Use the Image tab if you require images. Use the News tab to look for recent news articles.
The vast majority of people already utilise the tabs, so it’s simple. It is strongly advised that you become affiliated with them if you are not already. If properly used, they can substantially reduce search times.
2. Use quotes
Use quotes when looking for precise terms to reduce Google search’s need for assumption. Putting your search criteria in quotations instructs the search engine to look for the entire sentence.
For instance, if you type in “puppy dog sweaters,” the search engine will look for anything with those words in it, regardless of their placement.
However, if you write “Puppy Dog Sweaters” into the search bar, it will look for that same term. This can assist in locating certain information that, if not properly sorted out, might be hidden other stuff.
3. Use a hyphen to exclude words
Sometimes you may find yourself searching for a word with an ambiguous meaning. An example is Mustang. When you Google search for Mustang, you may get results for both the car made by Ford or the horse. If you want to cut one out, use the hyphen to tell the engine to ignore content with one of the other. See the example below.
- Mustang -cars
This tells the search engine to search for mustangs but to remove any results that have the word “car” in it. It can be wildly helpful when finding information about something without getting information about something else.
4. Use a colon to search specific sites
If you need to find articles or other content on a specific website, you might need to Google it. We’ll demonstrate the very basic syntax for you below.
Site: nhl.com Sidney Crosby
This will only search NHL.com for articles regarding renowned hockey star Sidney Crosby. Other search results won’t be displayed anymore. This is the shortcut you can use if you need to find certain material on a particular website.
5. Use the asterisk wildcard
The asterisk wildcard is one of the most useful ones on the list. Here’s how it works.
When you use an asterisk in a search term on Google search, it will leave a placeholder that may be automatically filled by the search engine later. This is a brilliant way to find song lyrics if you don’t know all the words. Let’s look at the syntax:
- “Come * right now * me”
To you or me, that may look like nonsense. However, Google search will search for that phrase knowing that the asterisks can be any word.
More often than not, you’ll find they are lyrics to The Beatles song “Come Together” and that’s what the search will tell you.
