The most popular internet search engine is Google. This is evident from the fact that “searching things online” in our vocabulary has been completely replaced by “google stuff”. And that’s simple enough, just type some keywords in a field, hit Enter and you’ll get some links to what you’re looking for.
As clever as it is, Google will only provide you with what you want, not what you want, which can be frustrating at times. Fortunately, there are many ways to refine your searches by using additional commands called operators in your queries. Each of these operators are useful on their own, but you can combine them for very fine searches.
Here is our guide to Google search operators. We’ve subdivided them by function:
Google treats each word as a separate search term. If you want Google to return exact matches of a phrase, use quotation marks (“”).
“google searchfor example, it will only return exact matches of “Google search” instead of results containing both “Google” and “search”.
If you want to connect two different keywords as part of a sentence, you can use the asterisk.
as a kind of wildcard. WordPress * plugin returns expressions like WordPress supportAddition , WordPress SEOAddition , WordPress theme andAddition
and the like.If you want to force or exclude a match, you can use the plus and minus signs (+ ,–
).For example, a query “cake recipe” -apple returns results containing exactly “cake recipe” and excludes results containing “apple”. Against this, “cake recipe“+”sour cherry
” returns results containing both exact expressions: “pie recipe” and “cherries”. If you are looking for a keyword that can appear in different grammatical forms or synonyms, you can try using it. ORor pipe (| ) network. a query america OR american
Site Specific Searches You can also use Google to search only one website and one website only; this is especially useful for content rich areas such as news sources and wiki websites. To search a single website domain:
Network. a call site:theguardian.com sweden
Returns results from the domain “theguardian.com” containing the keyword “Sweden”. This already powerful tool can be further developed using other operators. a query site:theguardian.com “Swedish social democratic party” -vote
Returns results from theguardian.com that contain the exact phrase “Swedish social democratic party” but exclude results containing the keyword “election”. You can also use the asterisk operator to act as a domain placeholder. For example, a search site:*.wiktionary.org lame
Returns results from various language versions of Wiktionary, such as en.wiktionary.org, fr.wiktionary.org, and others, with various definitions of the word “lame”. You can also reverse site search by searching for pages that link to a specific page. connection:
Calls in a Time Range
But what if you want to search an archive or have a rough idea of when the content you’re looking for is published? Google has an operator you can use. You can use the dot operator (..) to search for a number in an integer array. For example, olympic games 1920..1940
Social Searches Searching social media websites is easy and intuitive. If you’re looking for a social media profile, put a “at” sign (@) in front of your keyword. For example, a search @qodeinteractive
It will return results from our profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Behance, Dribbble and other social media.And if you want to search for a hashtag, add a hash symbol to the beginning of your keyword (#). a query”#bridge theme
Searches by PriceIf you’re shopping for anything from real estate to pizza, you may already have a budget. Assuming your budget is in US dollars, euros or pounds, Google can help you find the deal you need. Simply start your search with a currency sign ($ ,£ or€
) and a price. You can also use a decimal point (.) for very precise searches. For example, a search $10 hamburger beer It will yield results for burger and beer deals costing $10 USD, 1000 €“Second hand car
Location Related Searches To get results for a specific location location: Network. For Google News results, use:Location:
. For example, search Location: Hanoi Grill
Hanoi is a great way to find a grill restaurant in Vietnam. Similarly, if you are interested in local weather, weather forecast:
Network. a query weather: hell norway
Searches by File Type But what if you’re looking for a document or a specific file type, not a website? You can use google to search by file type using file type:
Network. A Google search for file type:pdf superman Returns the results of downloadable pdfs containing Last Son of Krypton. This also works with other extensions such as: doctor ortxt
makes archive searches much easier. You can also use Google to search for images of a specific size. Image size:
Network. You need to follow this with width and height in pixels separated by x. a query file type:gif image size:500×300 cat
Advanced Operators
Finally, we will touch on some advanced operators. To search for a keyword that is part of a URL inurl: Network. Similarly, using the search post title: and title: operators generate results that contain the keyword on the page or in the post title (useful for searching blogs or newsletters), faith: operator is used to search for anchors. To search the post text itself for keywords text:
Network. to the above operators. all(allinurl: ,all text: ,allintitle: andallinanchor:
) will return results for a few keywords, all of which will appear in appropriate places in the search.
As a result
And here is our handy guide to Google search operators. As we showed above, you can also combine any of these for greater precision in your searches. With just a few easy commands, you too can save time by refining your searches and avoid dealing with results that are almost irrelevant.
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