Learning to google. Google Search Secrets Everyone Should Know
Information is the oil of the 21st century, and the ability to search for it is a must-have skill for every modern person.
Chances are you search Google at least a few times a day. Among your requests, you can find everything from finding nearby restaurants to questions related to everyday chores. Google usually does a great job, even if you didn’t enter the phrase correctly.
However, when it comes to using Google search for research purposes or if you need a narrower and more precise result, you should use advanced settings.
You can use hidden search modifiers to get more accurate results much faster. In this article, we have collected the most useful of them.
Why are quotes needed?
Are you looking for something specific, such as an author’s name, a long quote, text, or phraseology? By default, Google will likely give you results where only part of your query matches the information on the site. Put the desired phrase in quotation marks so that the search engine shows only those results that fully match it.
For example: iPad Air "4-го поколения"
Using the dash
Sometimes a certain word can mess up your search results. If you don’t care about sites where it appears frequently, you can literally remove it with a dash.
For example: «каньон —гранд»
Finding a Specific File Format
This is especially useful if you’re looking for a specific type of document on the web: enter your search phrase and then just add " filetype:pdf " at the end. Thus, you will only be shown files in PDF format. You can also find PowerPoint presentations , Word documents, and Excel sheets by specifying the appropriate format.
For example: презентация о безопаснти в сети filetype:ppt
Why add an asterisk
Sometimes you google the lyrics of a song and you can’t remember a couple of words. This is where the asterisk comes in handy. Google treats it like a wildcard – it will give you search results based on gaps in your knowledge.
For example: хочешь * апельсинов
Search for similar sites
This is a hack that everyone should know about. Let’s say you’ve found a site you like and want to see more of it. You can simply ask Google to do the hard work for you by using the search term " related:site address ".
For example: related:amazon.com
Search on a specific site directly on Google
Usually search on websites is not well thought out. However, since Google indexes web content anyway, you can use it for reliable searches on a particular resource. Use the site:link to site format the next time you want to search for something on a specific web site.
For example: игры site:exploit.media
Search for two options at the same time
Want to search two queries at once? For example, you are looking for series from Netflix or Amazon Prime. You can do this with the pipe character, which will tell Google to run two queries at the same time and return the corresponding results.
For example :лучшие сериалы Netflix | Prime
Search in a range of numbers
When you use Google for scientific research, number range searches will help you narrow down the number of results found related to certain time frames. You can use two dots to search within a range of two numbers.
For example :научные исследования 1920..1935