10 Google Tricks All Experts Recommend

If you want to turn your computer into a personal assistant, and if you always find yourself Googling for the same thing more than once, this post is for you.

You’ve probably mixed up fnm google finance with Bing and Yahoo searches before. You may have unwittingly searched “10 ways to prepare for a 10K marathon” when what you actually wanted was “10k preparation”. And then there are those times when Google totally doesn’t understand what it is that you’re looking for (or can’t show images of it). These ten Google tricks will make searching easier — so pay attention!

1. Searching or Typing Words Normally

The search box in Google is your best friend. It’s simple, it’s effective and you should use it whenever you don’t know if a certain word or phrase exists in your search results. Let me explain: if you’re looking for articles on “how to change a car tyre”, you can simply type the words “how to change” and “tyre” into the search box instead of writing out the whole sentence.

Selecting the appropriate website from a list of results is much easier when you type words into an empty search box than when you click on ‘ Search ‘.

Online typing is a huge time-saver and it’s especially useful for peeking into that website you’ve never heard about. Even if you know the website’s name and you know it will definitely be among the search results, start by typing only a few relevant words: that way, it will be much easier to spot the correct article.

2. Searching for dates

Nowadays, all of us have very important dates stored in our phones, tablets or computers. We also take lots of photos which are dated and we often save web pages containing information related to specific dates (an event or an article published on that day) or to particular periods — e.g. 2014/10/12 (it’s October 12th).

Because we use birth dates, wedding dates, holiday dates, event dates and “saved on” and “created on” dates so often when looking for information online, it’s easy to end up with many (or even too many) search results. In that case, our job gets harder if the date is at the beginning of a sentence or after a space.

Sometimes a good way to narrow down search results is to put quotation marks around the year (e.g. 2014), the month (e.g. December) or even the day (e.g. 10).

3. Searching for a range of dates

If the information you’re looking for is related to a particular period (like 2013) or a particular date (like 10/10/2013), as opposed to specific dates, use an approximate range with brackets. For example, “2013-2014” or “2013-2015”.

4. Using Google Image Search

It’s often easier to find photos related to a certain topic by using images that match the words that describe your interest. This is especially true when searching for sports and fitness-related pictures. You can easily track down pictures of runners, climbers, swimmers, weightlifters in full gear or running around on an exercise bike by using Google Image Search.

5. Searching for specific file types

If you want to find a PDF related to human resources management, or a Word document containing the instructions on how to install your new air conditioning system, use Google’s file type search.

6. Using quotes around phrases

Quotes (” “) are especially helpful if you’re looking for an exact phrase, like: “washing my car” or “the best ways to swim”. Just remember not to put any spaces before and after your quotation marks — otherwise the search engine will think that you’re looking for both a sentence including the words “washing my car” and another one including the words “the best ways to swim”.

7. Finding documents with specific keywords

You can even use quotes to find a specific keyword (e.g. “Google” or “search engine”) in your search results. This is an especially handy trick for people who are always getting distracted when reading long articles, or for someone who cannot read quickly because he has a disability or for one who wants to do some research on the topic: by searching for the word in quotation marks, he will avoid clicking on anything that isn’t relevant.

8. Searching using phonetics

When you’re looking for something that may be difficult to spell, it’s often easier to use phonetics (i.e., spelling out each alphabet letter followed by the corresponding first syllable of a word). For example, searching for “shaar” instead of “shampoo”.

9. Using OR

If you want to include all possible options in your search results, use the pipe character (|) and the word OR in your query. For example, if you’re looking for articles on swimmers or runners but also on triathletes, type in: “swimmers|runners|triathletes”.

10. Using quotes with words that have meaning in themselves

 There are some words that already have meaning because of their very name (e.g. “search”, “learn”, “website”, etc.). In that case, you don’t need to put quotes around them (because it will make no sense anyway).

Summary:

There are tons of other ways to use Google. This list covers my top ten but it’s not by any means all-inclusive. Some of these tips may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often people forget about them or overlook them entirely.