Cast your mind back into the mists of time, to a place where dial up modems trilled and garbled as you connected to the world wide web, to a place where you might have still used AskJeeves.com and where Nokia ruled the mobile roost. One thing you might remember is that when you used search engines, you really had to put in some effort. In more recent times, that effort has become less necessary as Google has become smarter. Yet those techniques you may have forgotten, or never had to learn, could still offer real benefits when Google is misbehaving. Here are some great ways to ensure you always find what you want, in the shortest amount of time:
Search terms called “operators” are what you need to understand to become a Google search ninja. I’ve put operators in square brackets []:
- Using quotation marks ["] Your search["] instructs Google to seek an exact phrase. Otherwise Google breaks things up into individual words.
- Prefixing a word with a dash [-] excludes a word from your search.
- To search within a particular site only, use [site:]examplesite.com
- Prefix a word with the [~] symbol, and Google will search for words with similar meaning.
- Use the [filetype:] operator to search for a specific file type. E.g. “filetype:pdf why are there so many cat videos on youtube?”
- **The [intitle:] operator instructs Google to only show results with your chosen phrase in the title.
- The [author:] operator is used to return results only from a certain author (typically used in combination with Google Scholar).
Credit for this article goes to mashable. There are quite a few more hints and tricks for getting the most out of Google over there. If you found these tips useful, I’d recommend checking it out.