“If you can spell “Nietzsche” without Google, you deserve a cookie.” – Lauren Leto
People don’t realize that Google has many opportunities within the search bar that aren’t being taken advantage of. There are ways to do more intense searching and they create a better user experience.
Here are some ways you can improve your Google searching experience:
- Quotation marks: “keyword” Doing this in your search terms lets you search exactly for the word instead of a broad match. You can also say keyword “keyword” if you just want to guarantee that one part is exactly matched or you can “keyword phrase” if you have an entire phrase that you want to be matched perfectly.
- Dashes: -keyword Doing this excludes a keyword from your search and can be used in conjunction with the quotation marks.
- Site search: site:mialiang.com When you use this operation you search within the specific website instead of all of Google.
- Two periods: keyword 1995..2002 Include two periods when you want to search within two number ranges.
As someone that works with Google’s algorithm on a daily basis, I’m constantly trying to take advantage of and learn more about the operators within Google. There are certainly others out there but these are the few that I use on a regular basis.