Google is already the biggest search engine, a word in Oxford dictionary and perhaps the first thing that you and me type in a browser when you start surfing the internet. But even after so much popularity very often we are stuck with chasing a query modifying and then again re-modifying it to filter out the best result out of the junk that you never wanted.Google is a great search tool and people back their at Google have already devised ways for you and me to use their search engines most effectively. With a little tweak to your ordinary queries you can achieve great results and save lots of time.
Tips for better searches
Exact Phrase search (“<Query>“)
Search within a specific website (site:)
Site specific searches are really useful when you want to search for some info in a particular website.For example, the query [Android:techbu.com ] will return pages about Android but only from techbu.com.
Exclude the Unwanted words (-)
Adding a minus (-) sign before a query will result in the exclusion of that word from the search query.Lets say you want to search about Cricket, but you want to exclude any results that contain the term Bowling. To do this, simply use the “-” sign in front of the word you want to exclude.
Example Search: Cricket -Bowling
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.
Google has published an Official Guide about these Search tweaks and can be found here Web Search Help
Special Google Search Features
Apart from the above tweaks Google has also launched some of Special Search Features for special occasions.Search Weather
To see the Weather for worldwide cities, type “weather” followed by the city and state, zip code/ pin code, or city and country.
For Example: weather New Delhi,India
Stock Quotes
To see current market data for a given company or fund, type the ticker symbol into the search box.
For example: NYSE
Time
To see the time in many cities around the world, type in “time” and the name of the city.
Sports Scores
To see scores and schedules for sports teams type the team name or league name into the search box.
Calculator
To use Google’s built-in calculator function, simply enter the calculation you’d like done into the search box.
Example: 4+2*6
Unit Conversion
You can use Google to convert between many different units of measurement of height, weight, and volume among many others. Enter your desired conversion into the search box .
Example: 1cm in inches
Synonym Search
If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign (~) immediately in front of your search term.
For example ~restaurant
Dictionary Definitions
To see a definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word “define” then a space, then the word(s) you want defined. To see a list of different definitions from various online sources, you can type “define:” followed by a word or phrase.
For example define:Technocrat
Flight Schedules
This is a recently launched service by Google that lets you to search for the flight schedules.To see flight schedules to or from a particular destination, type “flights from” or “flights to” followed by the city or airport of interest. You can also add another location with “to” or “from” and view the schedule for a specific route.
Currency Conversion
You can use Google to convert currency to use the built-in currency converter, simply enter the conversion you’d like done into the Google search box.
For Example 15USD in INR
These are just a few examples of ways to enhance your search results with common every day queries, there are more tools that have been introduced like
Google Local: Find products and services in a specific town or zip /Pin code.
Language: Specify in which language you’d like your results.
Date: Restrict your results to the past three, six, or 12 month periods.
Occurrences: Specify where your search terms occur on the page – anywhere on the page, in the title, or in the URL.
Numrange search: Numrange searches for results containing numbers in a given range.You can use Numrange to set ranges for everything from dates,Weights,and prices. It’s really useful to compare prices .
For a more Comprehensive guide you may want to read Google’s official text on this :
Special Search Features
Advanced Search Features
I hope that after reading this article now you can search the web better and use the power of Google to its optimum level.