Search engines like Google have changed the way we communicate, collaborate, research, buy and sell, date etc.  We all appreciate Google and welcome any thing that helps us in our lives.

However what I’ve noticed from a lot of people I’ve talked to is that they understand Google and they understand how to search.  But they have no idea that Google has advanced search techniques that would help us to quickly find what we’re searching for.

Below you’ll find some advanced search techniques that should help you streamline your search results and find the things that you’re searching for easier.  For illustrations purposed we used bold and underline for the advanced search techniques.

Enjoy!

• Phrase search (“”)
  Using double quotes around a set of words tells Google to consider the exact words in that exact order without altering them. By insisting on phrase search you might be missing good results accidentally. For example, a search for “Eddie Francis” (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Eddie H. Francis.

See example below!

Google Search - Online Marketing

• Search within a specific website (site:)
  Our friend Google allows us to specify that our search results must come from a given website. For example the search mayor site:windsorstar.com will return pages about the mayor but only from windsorstar.com The simpler searches mayor windsorstar.com or mayor Windsor star will usually be just as good, though they might return results from other sites that mention the Windsor Star. You can also specify a whole class of sites, for example mayor site:.gov will return results only from a .gov domain and mayor site:.ca will return results only from Canadian sites.

See example below!

Google Search for Mayor with in windsorstar.com

• Terms you want to exclude (-)
  Attaching a minus sign immediately before a word indicates that you do not want pages that contain this word to appear in your results. The minus sign should appear immediately before the word and should be preceded with a space. For example, in the search anti-virus software, the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not be interpreted as an exclusion symbol; whereas the search anti-virus -software will search for the words ‘anti-virus’ but exclude references to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by using the - sign in front of all of them, for example mustang -cars –football -ford. The - sign can be used to exclude more than just words. For example, place a hyphen before the ‘site:’ operator (without a space) to exclude a specific site from your search results.

See example below!

Google Search for Online Marketing

• Fill in the blanks (*)
  The *, or wildcard, is a little-known feature that can be very powerful. If you include * within a query, it tells Google to try to treat the star as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search Google * will give you results about many of Google’s products. The search Eddie Francis voted * on the * strike will give you stories about different votes on human rights. Note that the * operator works only on whole words, not parts of words.

See example below!

Online Marketing Windsor Ontario - Google Search

More advanced Google Search techniques.

• Search exactly as is (+)
  Google employs synonyms automatically, so that it finds pages that mention, for example, childcare for the search child care (with a space), or Ontario history for the search ont history. But sometimes Google helps out a little too much and gives you a synonym when you don’t really want it. By attaching a + immediately before a word (remember, don’t add a space after the +), you are telling Google to match that word precisely as you typed it.

• The OR operator
  Google’s default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type ‘OR’ in ALL CAPS). For example, Detroit Lions 2004 OR 2005 will give you results about either one of these years, whereas Detroit Lions 2004 2005 (without the OR) will show pages that include both years on the same page. The symbol | can be substituted for OR. (The AND operator, by the way, is the default, so it is not needed.)

Well I hope the above examples will help you in your quest to find what you’re searching for in Google quicker and much easier.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them below.

Thanks and good luck!

Mike d