- The greatest way to searching beyond with google is by using the Advanced Search Link. This enables us to search for exact phrases, “all these words”, or one of the specified keywords by entering search terms into the appropriate box.
- You can also define region, updated time, what language and what file type you’re looking for, all with menus.
- Advanced Search lets you type in a Top Level Domain (like .co.uk) in the “Search within site of domain” box to restrict results.
- Google’s main search invisibly combines search terms with the Boolean construct “AND”. When you enter smoke fire – it looks for smoke AND fire.
- To make Google search for smoke or fire, just type smoke OR fire
- Instead of OR you can type the | symbol, like this: smoke | fire
- Boolean connectors like AND and OR are case sensitive. They must be upper case.
- Search for a specific term, then one keyword OR another by grouping them with parentheses, like this: water (smoke OR fire)
- To look for phrases, put them in quotes: “there’s no smoke without fire”
- Synonym search looks for words that mean similar things. Use the tilde symbol before your keyword, like this: ~eggplant
- Exclude specific key words with the minus operator. new pram -ebay excludes all results from eBay.
- The plus operator makes sure stop words are included. Like: fish +and chips
- You can also ask Google to fill in a blank. Try: Christopher Columbus discovered *
- Search for any filetype directly using the modifier filetype:[filetype extension]. For example: soccer filetype:pdf
- Exclude entire file types, using the same Boolean syntax we used to exclude key words earlier: rugby -filetype:doc
- Google recognises 10 main file types through advanced search, including all Adobe Acrobat PDF(.pdf), Autodesk DWF(.dwf), Adobe Postscript(.ps), Microsoft Excel(.xls), Microsoft Word (.doc), Shockwave Flash (.swf) and plain text files.
- In fact, you can combine any Boolean search operators, as long as your syntax is correct. An example: “sausage and mash” -onions filetype:doc
- Google has some very powerful, hidden search parameters, too. For example “intitle” only searches page titles. Try intitle:herbs
- The modifier inurl only searches the web address of a page: give inurl:spices a go.
- Find live webcams by searching for: inurl:view/view.shtml
- Want to know how many links there are to a site? Try link:sitename – for example link:www.mozilla.org
- Similarly, you can find pages that Google thinks are related in content, using the related: modifier. Use it like this: related:www.microsoft.com
- Google News (news.google.com) has its own Boolean parameters. For example “intext” pulls terms from the body of a story.
- If you use the operator “source:” in Google News, you can pick specific archives. For example: heather mills source:daily_mail
- Using the “location:” filter enables you to return news from a chosen country. location:uk for example.
- The general search engine can get very specific indeed. Try movie: to look for movie reviews.
- The modifier film: works just as well!
- Google really likes movies. Try typing director: The Dark Knight into the main search box.
- For cast lists, try cast: name_of_film
- Try searching for weather London – you’ll get a full 4-day forecast.
- There’s also a built-in dictionary. Try define: in the search box.
- Google stores the content of old sites. You can search this cache direct with the syntax keyword cache:site_url
- No calculator handy? Use Google’s built in features. Try typing 12*15 and hitting “Google Search”.
- Google’s calculator converts measurements and understands natural language. Type in 14 stones in kilos, for example.
- It does currency conversion too. Try 200 pounds in euros
- If you know the currency code you can type 200 GBP in EUR instead for more reliable results.
- And temperature! Just type: 98 f to c to convert Fahrenheit to Centigrade.
- Want to know how clever Google really is? Type 2476 in roman numerals, then hit “Google Search”…
- Search locally by appending your postcode to the end of query. For example Indian food BA1 2BW finds restaurants in Bath, with addresses and phone numbers!
- Looking for a map? Just add map to the end of your query, like this: Illinois map
- Google Image Search recognises faces… add &imgtype=face to the end of the returned URL in the location bar, then hit enter to filter out pictures that aren’t people.
- Keeping an eye on stocks? Type stocks: followed by market ticker for the company and Google returns the data from Google Finance.
- Enter the carrier and flight number in Google’s Flights search box to return flight tracking information. https://www.google.com/travel/flights/
- Also get train timing information with the search term like “trains from London to Paris March 11”
- What time is it? Find out anywhere by typing time then the name of a place.
- Click “I’m Feeling Lucky” to be taken straight to the first page Google finds for your keyword.
- Enter a statistics-based query like population of Britain into Google, and it will show you the answer at the top of its results.
- You can search foreign sites specifically by clicking “Language Tools”, then choosing which countries sites to translate your query to. There’s also a box that you can enter a direct URL into, translating to the chosen language.
- Another useful, experimental search can be found at www.google.com/trends – where you can find the hottest search terms
- To compare the performance of two or more terms, enter them into the trends search box separated by commas.
