How to Search on Google : 60 Google Advanced Search Tips

Search engines are the backbone of our everyday internet use. We all use them almost daily – but not everyone is aware of the hidden tips and tricks available that’ll help you improve the results and speed of your search. Google - for instance - has lots of operators in place to help you find more relevant search results. You just have to know what those tricks are and how to use them.?

Here are some pointers that’ll save you Googling ‘how to Google’.

Just by learning a few formatting and punctuation tricks, you can tell Google how your search terms are related, or exclude certain words or phrases. You can also narrow down your search with criteria like location or pricing, or use Google to search within a single website (Music, Movies, Books, videos and Games etc).

Search operators

Here’s how to get the most out of your everyday Google searches.

Search exact phrases

? “search“ ?

• If you’re looking for an exact phrase, use quotation marks.
• “let them eat cake”

Exclude a word

? -search ?

• Add a hyphen before a word to exclude a search term. This is useful if you are searching for a word with several meanings.
• inception -movie

Search within a site

? site ?

• Get results from certain domains.?recipes
• site:theguardian.com

Search similar

? related ?

• Find sites with similar content to a URL you already know.
• related:visual.ly

Search for words in text

? allintext ?

• Find pages where the all terms appear in the text.
• allintext: holidays hot bargain

? intext: ?

• Find pages where the one terms appear in the text, and other terms appear elsewhere in the document (e.g. title or URL)
• john lennon intext:liverpool

Search for words in title

? allintitle?

• Find pages whose title contains all words in the search.
• allintitle: the big lebowski review

? intitle ?

• Find pages whose title contains a particular word in the title, with other terms appearing elsewhere in the document (e.g. in the text or URL)
• flu shot intitle:help

Search for words in URL

? allinurl: ?

• Find pages with the search query mentioned in the URL.
• allinurl: bbc news

Find news related to a particular location

? location:?

• Use this on Google News to find stories coming from a particular location.
• prince george location:auckland

Search for a particular filetype

? filetype:suffix ?

• Google will restrict results to pages that end in
• annual report 2014 filetype:pdf

Search for a number range

? .. ?

• Separate numbers by two periods to see results that contain numbers in the given range.
• dslr $300..$500

Blank

? * ?

• An asterisk works as a wildcard, and helps you find the missing word in a phrase.
• there is a * that never goes *

Either word

? OR ?

• If you want to find pages with one of several words, use a capitalized OR. Without OR, results would show pages that include all the terms.
• olympics 2012 OR 2016

Aside from the examples above, Google doesn’t usually recognize punctuation and grammar. However, punctuation and symbols that?do?work in Google search include:

• + when searching for things such as blood type
• @ when searching for social tags
• & when searching for strongly connected ideas and phrases
• % when searching for percent values
• $ when searching for prices
• # when searching for trending topics that use hashtags
• when searching for words that are strongly connected

Google Search Features

Google also has a few special search features that will help you find what you’re looking for, faster.

Weather

? weather <city> ?

• weather brooklyn

Stock Quotes

? <stock code> ?

• APPL

Current Time

? time <city> ?

• time melbourne

Sports Scores

? <team name> ?

• manchester united

Sunrise & Sunset Times

? sunset <city> ?

• sunset honolulu

Calculator

? <equation> ?

• 91*4

Conversions

? <amount+unit 1>to <unit 2> ?

• 10 miles to km

Dictionary

? define <term> ?

• define jingoism

Translations

? translate <word> to <language> ?

• translate pomme to English

Flight Statuses

? <flight number> ?

• BA 117

Film Showings

? Movies <postalcode> ?

• movies M11EZ

Package Tracking

? <tracking number> ?

• 1Z5615280351136446

IP Address

? ip address ?

• .. will give you your public IP address.

And besides using search terms, Google also offers you a host of other ways to search.

Google Search Tricks?– A useful app for enhancing your Google searches and getting the most of the search engine.?

Google Images?– lets you to search for images related to a particular word or phrase. You can also upload or link to an image to find more about it, or similar images.

Google Goggles?– lets you search the web using your mobile phone’s camera instead of words. Simply take a picture of the item you want to search for, and look at the results.

Google Trends ?– lets you explore trending search topics on Google and look at what other people are searching.

Google Books ?– lets you search and preview books from millions of publishers around the world.

Google Scholar?– lets your search for theses, abstracts and articles.

And for those who just want to have a bit of fun, try some of these search terms in Google:

• do a barrel roll
• askew
• the loneliest number
• google in 1998
• google sphere
• Atari breakout

From now on, you can find Anything you want with only 6 lines of code (See The First Comment) ??

?? Music : Your_Key_words +(mp3|wav|ac3|ogg|flac|wma|m4a) -inurl:(jsp|pl|php|html|aspx|htm|cf|shtml) intitle:index.of -inurl:(listen77|mp3raid|mp3toss|mp3drug|index_of|wallywashis)

?? Movies : Your_Key_words +(mkv|mp4|avi|mov|mpg|wmv) -inurl:(jsp|pl|php|html|aspx|htm|cf|shtml) intitle:index.of -inurl:(listen77|mp3raid|mp3toss|mp3drug|index_of|wallywashis)

?? Books : Your_Key_words +(PDF|MOBI|CBZ|CBR|CBC|CHM|EPUB|FB2|LIT|LRF|ODT|PDF|PRC|PDB|PML|RB|RTF|TCR|DOC|DOCX) -inurl:(jsp|pl|php|html|aspx|htm|cf|shtml) intitle:index.of -inurl:(listen77|mp3raid|mp3toss|mp3drug|index_of|wallywashis)

?? Games & softwares : Your_Key_words +(exe|iso|tar|rar|zip|apk) -inurl:(jsp|pl|php|html|aspx|htm|cf|shtml) intitle:index.of -inurl:(listen77|mp3raid|mp3toss|mp3drug|index_of|wallywashis)

?? Images : Your_key_words +(jpg|png|bmp|gif|tif|tiff|psd) -inurl:(jsp|pl|php|html|aspx|htm|cf|shtml) intitle:index.of -inurl:(listen77|mp3raid|mp3toss|mp3drug|index_of|wallywashis)

?? Other : Your_Key_words -inurl:(jsp|pl|php|html|aspx|htm|cf|shtml) intitle:index.of -inurl:(listen77|mp3raid|mp3toss|mp3drug|index_of|wallywashis)        

Here you can find an awesome info-graphic that sums it all up :