Plain old Web searching doesn't do the trick anymore: It yields too much random data, or not what you need. Here's how to get what you want when you want it—sometimes before you ask for it.Nobody "surfs" the Web anymore. Some 80 percent of all online sessions now begin with a search.
But only about 1 in 10 users really know how to leverage the Google search facility to zero in on high - quality search results on what they are looking for. In this short piece, I'll focus on some known and not so well - known techniques you can use to make your Google searching not only more productive, but more fun and useful.
Tip # 1:
Use Google Groups. Google has the most complete archive of usenet and other news posts going back over 20 years. By simply switching tabs from Web to Groups, your search term(s) will be repeated on the Groups archives. I cannot stress how valuable this can be- many, many times when I have not found a proper result on the web, by simply switching to Google Groups I've been able to find exactly what I was looking for.
Tip # 2:
Tailor responses. The Internet makes more wrong information available to more people than ever before. Google now invites you to promote items from your search results (that is, move them up in the search ranking), or remove them altogether, by clicking the gray icons next to each returned link. As you repeat this action in different searches, Google's software learns to deliver results that are more reliable for you—more in line with what you tend to look for. So, for example, you might get recipes when you search on "chicken," while Farmer Pete gets items about the care and feeding of laying hens. In addition, Google now tries to deliver "personalized" results by taking into account what you've clicked on in the past, so your own past search habits could affect the results you get as well.
Tip # 3:
Use the Asterisk (*) As a WildCard search term. Yes, you can insert an asterisk in your search phrase and it will act as a wild card matching any word in that place in the phrase. Not only that, but you can insert more than one asterisk in place of more than one word in your search phrase, up to the limit of ten search words - and the wild card markers are not counted toward this ten word limit.
Tip # 4:
Use Quotation marks to force finding a specific phrase. When you surround your phrase with quotation marks, the search engine will only return results exactly matching the entire phrase. This is an extremely powerful search technique, and yet it is not used by the majority of web searchers. If you search on the two words George and Washington, you will get over 8 million results. If you put quotation marks around the entire name, your results will be restricted to about 3 million. And if your search is on "George Washington" "Cherry Tree", you will only get about 12,600 results. You get the picture. This is especially important if your search contains what are called "stop words" - words that Google is designed to ignore, such as "and" "of" and "the". By including these inside your quoted phrase, you will get more targeted search results.
Tip # 5:
Use the Advanced Search Page. Fortunately, you don't need to memorize all of the above tricks, since they are conveniently offered to you in various combinations in the Advanced Search option which is always available from the main Google search page.
But only about 1 in 10 users really know how to leverage the Google search facility to zero in on high - quality search results on what they are looking for. In this short piece, I'll focus on some known and not so well - known techniques you can use to make your Google searching not only more productive, but more fun and useful.
Tip # 1:
Use Google Groups. Google has the most complete archive of usenet and other news posts going back over 20 years. By simply switching tabs from Web to Groups, your search term(s) will be repeated on the Groups archives. I cannot stress how valuable this can be- many, many times when I have not found a proper result on the web, by simply switching to Google Groups I've been able to find exactly what I was looking for.
Tip # 2:
Tailor responses. The Internet makes more wrong information available to more people than ever before. Google now invites you to promote items from your search results (that is, move them up in the search ranking), or remove them altogether, by clicking the gray icons next to each returned link. As you repeat this action in different searches, Google's software learns to deliver results that are more reliable for you—more in line with what you tend to look for. So, for example, you might get recipes when you search on "chicken," while Farmer Pete gets items about the care and feeding of laying hens. In addition, Google now tries to deliver "personalized" results by taking into account what you've clicked on in the past, so your own past search habits could affect the results you get as well.
Tip # 3:
Use the Asterisk (*) As a WildCard search term. Yes, you can insert an asterisk in your search phrase and it will act as a wild card matching any word in that place in the phrase. Not only that, but you can insert more than one asterisk in place of more than one word in your search phrase, up to the limit of ten search words - and the wild card markers are not counted toward this ten word limit.
Tip # 4:
Use Quotation marks to force finding a specific phrase. When you surround your phrase with quotation marks, the search engine will only return results exactly matching the entire phrase. This is an extremely powerful search technique, and yet it is not used by the majority of web searchers. If you search on the two words George and Washington, you will get over 8 million results. If you put quotation marks around the entire name, your results will be restricted to about 3 million. And if your search is on "George Washington" "Cherry Tree", you will only get about 12,600 results. You get the picture. This is especially important if your search contains what are called "stop words" - words that Google is designed to ignore, such as "and" "of" and "the". By including these inside your quoted phrase, you will get more targeted search results.
Tip # 5:
Use the Advanced Search Page. Fortunately, you don't need to memorize all of the above tricks, since they are conveniently offered to you in various combinations in the Advanced Search option which is always available from the main Google search page.
