Christian Bullock Advanced Google Search Tips: 10 Techniques to Get The Most out of Searching on Google

http://www.add3.com/insights/advanced-google-search-tips/

Sometimes performing a search at Google can be a frustrating experience. Sometimes you may be searching for the most up-to-date information about a particular subject only for some old, outdated resources to appear. Or perhaps you’re looking for a specifically-named product only for Google to show you unrelated results

Well, if you’ve ever had some frustrating experiences with performing searches on Google, this resource is for you. We’re making this article so you can share it with the search-challenged in your life: maybe it’s your Mom or Dad (or as I call my parents – my Mem Mem & Pep Pep). Perhaps a brother or sister. Every one of us has someone in our lives who seem to not really understand how to effectively search on search engines. Well, read on for 10 techniques to help you make the most out of searching on Google.

First of all…

What is an Advanced Google Search Operator?

A search operator is a way for the searcher to fine-tune their search query to try to get the most relevant results possible. Using a search operator can help you only see results with a certain word order that you specify, results during a certain date range, and more. Using search operators help you – the searcher – define what you wish to see in the search results.

Our Top 10 Advanced Google Search Techniques

Below are our favorite search operators to use to you get the most out of your search engine experience. Each one includes the exact operator and example of how to use it:

1.) “Negative Keyword”
-keyword 
Printer -cartridge will show results for the word printer but not the word cartridge.

2.) “File Type”
filetype:pdf
Cancer research filetype:pdf will show only results that you can download as a PDF flie.

3.) “Synonyms Match”
~keyword 
~car will search for “car” and synonyms of “car”

4.) “Phrase Match”
“keyword keyword”

“chocolate chip cookies” will not get results for someone who wrote “chocolate mint chip cookies”. Only those three words in that order.

5.) “OR”
The | symbol 
Jessica + Williams|Wiliams|William is a search for all of those possibilities (Jessica Williams OR Wiliams OR William)

6.) “Price Range”
#…#
bedding $100…$200 will show search results for bedding between $100 and $200 dollars

7.) “All in Text”
allintext:
allintext: chicken cilantro lime recipe will show search results for recipes with these three ingredients

MORE ADVANCED:

8.) “Search Within”
site:
Animals site:www.facebook.com will show only animal related pages within Facebook.

9.) “Date Search”
daterange:
Facebook daterange: 201108 will find only informationa nd news from August 2011.

10.) “Fill in the Blank”
*
Obama signed the * bill this week will allow google to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches.

Bonus! – Printable Sheet

We’ve compiled these top 10 techniques and are presenting them in a nice handout you can print and share with others. To download, just click here.

What do you think? Did we miss anything that you like to use? Please share below!

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(This blog post was created by Christian Bullock & Jessica Williams, our newest team member here at Amplify)