Searching Google can be a pain in the neck. Especially with the amount of people who are trying to game the system in order to “rank” high in Google search results. If you ever try to search Google for serious information with little time to spare you will know what I mean. How do you search Google and trust the information presented on the first page? You do not just want to go and search for any information in Google. Google has billions of pages indexed, and sometimes the information that you are looking for gets buried. How many people do you know will go beyond page 2 in their Google search results? As I have shared earlier, sometimes the best way to do your research online is not to use Google. Take a look at some of the other search engines that you can use to get exactly what you are looking for-most times. However, it cannot be overstated that, if it is not in Google it is probably not on the internet. So, since Google is the most powerful search engine, I will share some tricks and shortcuts that you can use to search Google like a pro today and get the precise results you are looking for.
Before you start using Google you need to ask yourself a few questions:
1-What filetypes am I looking for? Am I looking for a website?
2- Where do I want to get my information from? Are you looking to get your information from a university, government, or news site?
Now that you know what you are looking for, and where you want to get your information from, let’s get cracking.
Carry Out Your Research on Google
Search For a Word or Phrase
Probably the most common way that people Google search, or use any search engine for that matter, is by entering specific keywords or phrases. Doing so is perfectly fine, however you will be overwhelmed by the amount of results that you are going to get. To make your keyword searches more effective just enclose those words or phrases in quotation marks, and you will see how drastically Google has reduced the amount of relevant results with that precise phrase.
“keyword”
Search a Specific Site or Domain
Education and governmental sites are among the most reputable when carrying out research. Therefore, when you are carrying out serious research you want to include governmental, educational and reputable news organizations in your search. You will enter your keywords in Google’s search form using the syntax above. This syntax will limit your results to those specific domains.
[keyword] site:edu
or
[keyword] site:nytimes.com
Search For Specific Filetypes in Google Search
You may not want to bother yourself about researching various websites. You want to find articles that are already published on that particular topic. For this example we will use Global Warming. If you are looking for documents on Global Warming you will enter your search terms into Google in the form and request your prefered file type or extension. The extension for Powerpoint is ppt, the extension for Excel file is xls, for a website you can try html or php, and for the most popular document type for the web you will use pdf. You will enter your query with the following syntax:
filetype:[extension]
Link to This Site or Page
Let’s say you are carrying out your research and you come across a reputable site. The next thing that you should be saying to yourself is this, “Who else is talking about this topic?” To find out, all you have to do is to find out who is linking to this article.
link:[domain or page]
For the image above, we found a great article on on Global Warming by the NYTimes. Therefore, we wanted to find out if there were any other sites linking to that particular article. We entered the following syntax into the search form:
link:[URL/domain]
How to Find Related Sites or Pages
To find related sites of pages you will enter the related syntax into your Google Search form. There is usually a high correlation between linked pages and domains. In the example that we are using about Global Warming, if we take the same url and stick “related” in front, you will see that a few hundred related pages are returned.
related:[URL/domain]
Search Within the Title of a Page
You can limit your Google Search to just the title of your page. To do this, enter the following syntax before your search terms:
intitle:[keyword]
Search an Entire Phrase in the Title
Sometimes you may want to see only pages that contain your exact phrase. To limit your search results to only pages that contain the exact phrases that you are looking for, you will need to use the Allintitle syntax like this:
Allintitle:[query]
Combine Your Syntaxes
Combine your syntaxes to even further limit your searches in 1 click. For example, you may be able to combine a keyword search with a filetype search, all within a specific domain to really focus your search. Can you guess what Google is looking for? Yes, Google will be looking for the keyword Global Warming from Educational websites with a file type or extension of pdf.
{keyword} site:[domain] intitle:[keyword/phrase] filetype:[file extension]
Use Google as Your Personal Calculator and Converter
Perform Calculations
The Google calculator is a tool I use all the time. You can pretty much ask Google to convert anything . However, you must enter your query in a login manner. You almost always want to enter the word “convert” at the beginning of your query like this:
convert [what] to [what]
Use Google Search as a Calculator
Shhh! This is something that I do not tell my students, because you know they will not try to learn to carry out their calculations on their own. Google has a very powerful calculator that can carry out complex calculations. Give it a try.
[enter your algorithm]
Use Google as a World Clock
Finding the time can be a pretty useful feature, and besides is is pretty cool as well.
time:[city/country]
Conclusion
These are some of the more useful search limiters that I have used in Google to find the information that I am really looking for. If you just blindly enter your keywords into Google and hope that you find what you are looking for, it will only result in a frustrating time with that search form.