Have you ever imagined what the Internet would be without the most popular and most used search engine- Google? Surprising!
Yes, Google handles around 5.6 billion searches every day, with over 5.6 billion searches every day. Even if you are pro at using this search engine, there are plenty of other tricks under its sleeves.
Lets dive in and know few tricks to bring most out of Google:
Table of Contents
How To Search Something On Google:
Find A Phrase By Using (“”) Double-Quotes Or (?) Question Mark:
Want to know how to search something on Google in just a few seconds? Use double-quotes. Doing this will help Google renders only that pages which are in quotes. For instance, if you are looking for “Sony Headphones,” the search result will only include pages with Sony Headphones.
You can also use a Question Mark (?) to find any specific page. This can be used for searching for specific information. Let’s say you want to search for the specifications of the Sony Headphones, then, searching with the name won’t result in pages with specific dimensions.
Instead, search for Sony HT- 040-inch Headphones? Will search for pages that have specifications and the word ‘inch.’
Use Minus Sign To Eliminate Results:
With a plethora of social media apps and their searches, it sometimes become cumbersome to looking for something specific. Let’s say you want to search for ‘Shoes’ from Amazon, but with around 87,440,000 searches from Amazon, you get a lot of results related to Shoes only.
Source: ALT AGENCY
To avoid this, use minus (-) sign; doing this will eliminate the extra search and will generate a specific result of your interest e.g., Shoes- Sports.
Search Websites Using “Site:” Operator:
Let’s say you are looking for a website that you have read somewhere but don’t remember to use site: operator. This will limit your search to that specific website.
This trick is best for websites that don’t have any specific search function. Consider another example- let’s say you want to read an article about the nuclear weapon, but you want to read it from Forbes only; you can search by site: Forbes.com nuclear deal.
This will give you the results of everything about the nuclear deal that is published in Forbes.
Use ‘Define:’ To Learn The Meaning:
Streamline your search process by using ‘Define: XYZ’. This will help you search for anything from the dictionary without juggling a lot.
You will also be able to see the etymology and the graph for the word and its definition. Google will also suggest slang words or acronyms related to the word.
Find A Specific File:
Google also has an impressive feature of searching for a specific file or its type. This can be useful for the time when you search for a specific PDF or PowerPoint. The search syntax is very simple:
*Search anything here* filetype: pdf
just replace the ‘search anything here’ with what you want to search.
Track Your Packages:
Another impressive feature to use Google search is to track your orders. All you need is to enter the USPS, UPS, or your FedEx tracking number directly in the search bar and it will automatically show you tracking information.
This is a lot simpler than going to specific websites and tracing your packages there.
Say: Flip A Coin:
Want to know a fun shortcut of Google, click the mic icon on the search and say ‘Flip a coin.’ This will start flipping coins virtually, and you will have a ‘head/ tail.’ This feature is quite impressive when you did have one in hand.
So, this completes our list of most used and helpful features to be used at Google search. Do let us know the tricks or shortcuts that you are using in the comments below!
Leave a Reply