How To Make Your Google Searches Better

💓 If you enjoyed the information and the web site, please donate or become a Patreon.

🧠 Never forget any of your passwords with Roboform

One of my favorite links is Google Advanced Search. Use this link to narrow down your searches without using the commands below. The link is not on Google’s main page and I never understood why.

If you can’t access the advanced search you can use these commands to help your search:

❗ Find Exact Information

1. Exact Match
   • Find the search results containing the exact keywords of your search, put your keywords inside quotes (" “)
   • Example: If you want to find results for your exact keywords, say rare flowers
     • “free python courses”

2. Search for keywords in titles, URLs and text of search results
   • To search for results containing keywords in the specific parts of the search results
   • There is no spacing after the colon (:)
     • intitle: to look for keywords in the title
     • inurl: to look for the keywords in the URL
     • intext: to look for the keywords in the text
       1. intitle:data science
       2. inurl:data science
       3. intext:data science

3. Search for specific file types
   • Find search results containing specific file types
   • Use filetype before or after search keywords
   • There is no spacing after the colon (:)
     • Use filetype:insertfiletype
     • Examples of file types: pdf, ps, xls, ppt, doc
       1. web development filetype:pdf

4. Search within a site
   • Find results for your keywords within a specific site using site:insertkeyword.
   • You can also use this site:insertkeyword to see a list of links that are indexed by Google
     1. blockchain site:data.gal

5. Search for related sites
   • Use related:insertwebsite for finding the sites that are related to the given site
   • This is useful for finding the alternative or related sites of a website
     1. related:microsoft.com

6. Search for Google’s cached version of a site
   • Use cache:insertwebsite for checking Google’s cached version of a website
   • It is useful for Web Developers to check the cached version of websites
     1. cache:data.gal

❗ Search Using Operators

• There are search operators that you can use in your search to get the desired results faster.
• A few operators are: #, @, $, -, .., *, OR, AND, :before, :after

1. Search hashtags
   • Using # in front of keywords, searches for those hash-tagged words will be searched on social media websites
     1. #programmer

2. Search social media
   • Use @ to search in on social media websites for the keywords
     1. javascript @twitter

3. Search for a particular price product
   • Use $ in front of a number to search for that price
     1. iphone 13 $1100

4. Search within a range of numbers
   • Use (..) to search within a range of numbers such as prices, years, etc.
     1. surface $600..$1200

5. Search with optional keywords
   • Use (*) to search for something when you are not sure of certain keywords in your search
     1. learn * in a week

6. Search by excluding certain keywords
   • Use (-) to not use certain keyword results from your search results
   • This is useful to quickly filter out unclear results
     1. tea tree -oil

7. Search one or more combinations
   • Use OR to combine search results for multiple keywords
   • Make sure OR is in capital letters
     1. python OR java

8. Search for common results
   • Use AND operator to get results that are common to both keywords
   • Make sure AND is in capital letters
     1. programming language for statistics AND games

9. Search by time
   • You can use before: or after: to search results before or after a particular time
     1. cryptocurrency before:2015
     2. cryptocurrency after:2017

❗ Images

1. Search for the exact image size

   • Use imagesize: followed by the width and height, you can search for the exact size an image is by using Google
   • This is useful for finding the social media covers, profile pics, or website placeholder images of particular sizes
     • Do not put spaces in between the width and height
       1. cloud computing imagesize:800x600

2. Reverse image search

   • You can do a reverse image search that is to find where it is all used or find similar types of images
     • To search by image go to Google Reverse Image Search and upload an image you want to find search results for

3. One-or-the Other

   • Use | (pipe) to search any one of the given terms

4. (One-or-other) and this

   • Use (A | B) C to get a result C which has both connections with A & B

5. Wild card

   • Use * to return all matching combinations of the search term

• Uselocation:keyword to filter by locations
• Use “vs” to compare two terms

💡 From marketing to design use Fiverr for all your needs

💓 If you enjoyed the information and the web site, please donate or become a Patreon.

Elyse Y. Robinson is the Founder of Switch Into Tech where she does monthly seminars, posts weekly freebies to help you switch into tech, Writer of Nube: Switch Into A Cloud Career, podcaster for Nobody Wants To Work Tho, creator of FullTuitionScholarships.org to help you not go into college debt, and in school for Data Science. Elyse is in love with Mexico, researching any and everything, and helping people switch into tech.