The sheer volume of content on the internet is shocking. You can virtually learn about virtually anything, buy and sell goods, read literature of all kinds, watch endless videos and communicate with people across the world. The list could go on forever – and we’re not even getting into the deep web.
Despite the benefits of a seemingly bottomless resource, the amount of information at your fingertips can be overwhelming. That’s why knowing how to fully utilize a search engine is vital to being resourceful on the internet.
Below we’ll share with you the most useful tools Google has built into its search engine to help you find what you’re looking for.
1. Quotations ” “
Quotations around a phrase will force Google to search for a specific strand of words in an exact order. What if the fox didn’t jump over the dog?
2. Minus sign –
Put a minus sign in front of a word if you want to eliminate that word from results. Let’s say you don’t want any funny results because this is serious business here:
3. Asterisk *
Use an asterisk in place of a word or phrase if you aren’t exactly sure what you’re searching for. Maybe you didn’t see what jumped over the dog:
4. Search specific websites with site:
Personally, this is our favorite trick. If you already know which website you want to search, you can narrow it to results only from that site by adding site:examplesite.com to the end of the search. For example, here’s what you would type if you wanted to search our website for dog-related content:
5. Search by image
If you switch to the image tab of a results page you can click the camera icon in the search bar to search using an image. You can upload an image or paste a URL that links to one. Google will predict keywords used to describe the image and point you to visually similar images.
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Searching the worldwide web can be intimidating at first and certainly tedious, but put these tools to good use and they’re sure to up your search engine game.
