10 Tricks for Finding Anything on Google

Google has become the “go-to place” to find just about anything. Whether you are researching for a paper or trying to find your best friend from first grade, you can find it on Google. There are times, however, when you want to either narrow or broaden your search. Listed below are ten tricks for finding anything on Google.

1. Simple is Good. If you are looking for something basic and do not have all the information to search ,you can do a basic search for keywords and let Google do the rest. If you are looking for a Chinese restaurant, but can’t remember the name just type in Chinese and the zip code for the town it is located in. If you don’t know the zip code, enter the city and state instead.
2. Less is Best. Since Google will look for all the words you enter you will want to use the least amount of words as possible in your search. Instead of typing “in what country is the highest population” you may want to try “highest population”.
3. Use Quotations. By entering your search in quotation marks you are telling Google that you want those words in that exact order. Be careful when using it though, because you could be missing some results that you would want. By entering “John Adams” you may miss out on results that say John Q. Adams or Adams, John.
4. Exclude Unneeded Words. By using a dash before a word, you can eliminate results that include that word. If you are searching for cars made in 1957 –mustang. You are narrowing your search to exclude the word mustang from your search. You want to be careful on this as well, because the results you are looking for could be in a list format where mustang is an option along with the remaining models.
5. Fill in the Blank. By using the star (*) you are telling the search engine to look for anything in that place of the sentence or query. One of the examples Google gives is looking for the voting records. [Senator * voted * on the * bill]. This will give you results for all Senators without having to know their names or how they voted on every bill.
6. Filter by Content. The default view when searching on Google is to search everything, but you can narrow it down. You can search just images, news, books, videos, blogs, places, shopping, realtime, discussions and recipes.
7. Reverse Lookup. If you are looking for results that come from a specific country you can search for that too. By using a colon before the country name (:Canada), you will return results that originated in that country only.
8. Site Specific. Have you ever wanted to search within a specific website, but they didn’t have a search bar? You can use Google to search for content within any site. Just type what you are looking for in quotes and then type the word site: and enter the site name with no spaces. “Free Puppy” site:entersitenamehere.com
9. Document Specific. You can even search the web using Google for a specific document type. Maybe you found a helpful excel file once, but can’t remember the website it was on. Just type your search specifics in quotes and then the word filetype: followed by the document extension you are looking for. “Timesheet” filetype:xls.
10. Math Problems. If you do not have a calculator handy, and do not want to pull one up on your computer or phone, you can type your problem into the Google search bar, and it will give you the results.

Google is continually updating their website to be more user-friendly and to provide better results. By using the tips listed above to either narrow or broaden your search results on Google, you can find any information you want on the internet.

Taken From Dial Up