Making Your Google Searches More Efficient

Google as we know is the most popular and the most dominant search engine on the net. It is also placed in many popular sites as their search engines. However not everyone knows how to use it efficiently. It has many operators that can make searchers get better results on their searches. Some useful operators will be described here.

1. "+" (plus sign)

That means required.

If you put that sign in front of a word (example: +food), Google will be forced to search documents that contain that word.

2. "-" (minus sign)

That means excluded.

If you put that sign in front of a word (example: -food), Google will searches for documents that doesn't have that word in it.

3. "|" (pipe sign)

That means or.

Can also be replace with "OR".

If you put that sign between two words (example: food|drink), Google will find documents that contain one of those words.

4. "..." (Quotation mark)

That means complete phrase.

If you put words inside that sign (example: "the food"), Google will find documents that contain that phrase, exactly as it is written.

5. "~"

That means similar.

By using that mark, Google will search for documents or files that have similar meaning to the word in the query (example: putting ~tricks in the search query will make Google find documents with the word tricks, cheats, secrets, etc)

6. "*" (star sign)

That means wildcard search.

Putting that sign before/after a word or between two words will make Google search for documents containing the words we search for + any words that can make a logical phrase which will be put at the sign. (example: Searching *tricks will result with documents that have advertising tricks, lighter tricks, card tricks, etc

7. site:www.google.com

This operator will restrict your searches to the given site. This is useful when you are looking for documents in a site. (The phrase www.google.com will have to be changed with any site name you want to restrict the searches to.)

8. filetype:doc

With it you can find documents with specific extensions. (The word doc can be change with any extensions you like.)

9. related:www.google.com

By using that operator, Google will look for sites that have similar usage with the site put in the search query. (In the case above, Google will look for search engines' site since Google is one of them.)

Besides being used as a search engine, Google has some other usages that similar with a search engine:

1. Finding Definition

define:term

That operator will find you the definition of any words you like. It can also be non-English words. (The word term will have to be changed with your word(s))

2. Finding information about a site

info:www.google.com

That operator will provide you information about sites you want to know about. (The phrase www.google.com will have to be changed with any site name you want to know about.)

3. Accessing Google cached pages

cache:www.google.com

That operator will provide you the page from Google saved cache. This is useful when the page you want to look for is down. (The phrase www.google.com will have to be changed with any site name you want to find the cached page.)

4. Mathematical operation

You can count the results of mathematical operation, for example 2356+8885 by using Google. Just simply put the operation in the search query, and the result will show up.

5. Conversion

You can convert value of an indicator into another indicator. Just put this term in the search query: 'value' 'the former indicator' 'in' 'the target indicator'. For example: 250 km in m

6. Translation

You can translate word(s) form English to other languages or from other languages to English by using one of Google facility. This one is different from the search engine.

To use it, you have to use this site: www.google.com/translate_t

7. Accessing blocked sites

This function is a special one. It is an advance function of Google translation feature. Google doesn't mean to put this function, but this is found from creative minds. You can make Google translate the sites you can't access to. By using that way, you can access those sites as you like. Just simply put the URL in Google sites translation query.

Those are some useful operators to help you get better results on your searches. However, that's not all of them. Just do a little research for some other operators that can be used in Google.