Google Speed-Search Lessons
Google never existed when I was in school, so unlike children nowadays, my generation and those before me never had any lessons in using a search engine. No-one ever told us about phrase searches, negation, wildcards, or any of Google’s special search syntax. Most of us just type in a few keywords and hope for the best, and it’s for these people that I decided to write some short lessons on how to speed up a search with a few Google tricks.
Introduction; How to search with phrases.
“Canon printer driver” Vista
Specify alternatives with Boolean “OR”.
“World Cup” (soccer OR football)
Exclude certain web pages from your results with negation.
Japanese cars -used
Learn about the words Google ignores, and how to force Google to include them.
+the king +of rock
Google is case insensitive, so all the searches below are equal.
apple, APPLE, Apple, aPpLe
Use wildcards instead of actual words.
“ten little * jumping on the bed”
Narrow down your search with Google’s special syntax.
intitle:”michael jackson profile”
intext:”better than Windows Vista”
inurl:help Amazon
Search a specific web site with the site: syntax element.
site:eslcafe.com “alphabet games” kindergarten
Learn how to use Google as a calculator, dictionary, measurement and currency converter, and for Q&A about weather, time, populations and much more!
