Google Search Tips - Using Advanced Search Tools

Google answers almost a billion queries per day. Sometimes you may not find what you are looking for. There is lot of content available on web because of this you may get confused what would be the answer for your query. Using google advanced search tools you can find the exact information what you are looking for.


Recently google introduced an online course for improving search skills by learning advanced search tools. I have done the course successfully, here I'm sharing some google search tips which you would love to use in your future search queries.

Google Search Tips:

1. Finding the meaning - When you are reading an online article or book you may come across some words for which you don't know the meaning. For example I don't know the meaning of "Tantrum". Then using define keyword you can find the meaning of the word. as shown in below pic1.

If you click on more info as shown in above pic you will get web definitions as shown in below pic and you can also translate meaning to your desired language as arrow pointed in below pic.

2. Search The Phrase - When you search a query google will show you results where your search keywords matched. But when you place a query in between "" google will show the results where that particular phrase is matched. You can see the difference in below pics. In 1st pic I used search query i hate those people who tell lies then google will show results where the words hate, people, lies are present as shown in below pic.

Next time I placed the same query in "" then google will show results that matches the exact phrase as shown in below pic. This is useful when you want to search for books or articles by titles or by particular author etc.

3. Site Operator - If you want to get results from a particular site or from particular domain we can use site operator. For example my search query is 2012 olympics you will get results from different sites as shown in below pic

If I want Results from only Olympics.org site I'll use site operator and all the results will be from olympics.org as shown in below pic

If I want results from particular domain only say .org then query will be as shown in below pic and all the results will be from sites with .org domain.

4. filetype operator - filetype operators helps you in finding different file types available on web for your search query. For example if I want a pdf document on google search the query will be as show in below pic and all the results will be pdf documents which you can download.

Supported file types are pdf(Adobe Acrobat), ppt(Microsoft Powerpoint), doc(Microsoft Word),  xls(Microsft Excel), swf(Shock wave flash),  dwf(Auto desk), rtf(rich text format), kml(google earth), kmz(google earth)

5. Minus(-) Operator - minus operator is used to omit particular results for a query it can be used combination of  site or filetype operators. For example the search result for the query 2012 olympics will be as shown in below pic

Now if I want to omit the results from the site london2012.com I'll place - before site operator as shown in below pic

6. OR operator - OR operator is used to get combined results. For example if I want results of two queries say airplane and wright brothers the search query will be as shown in below pic and some results will be for airplane, some results will be about wright brothers and some results will be with both as shown in below pic

**Note- OR should be in capital letters and to get effective results multiple queries should be enclosed in quotes("") as shown in above pic.

7. Search Tools - When you search for a query you can apply different filters to get results according to your choice. Some useful areas of a search page are marked in below pic

8. Useful Google Search Queries 
Calculator - Google search can be used as calculator for finding answers to longer mathematical expressions

Weather - Using google search you can get weather condition of any location and you can also know when the sunset and sunrise will occur.

Time - Google search allows you to find current time in different locations

Currency Conversion - Using google search you can convert one currency to other

Unit Conversion - Google search can convert one unit to other

Flights - Using google search we can get flight schedules from one location to other location

Translation - You can translate one language to other right from google search

Local Search - From google search you can get local results for queries such as movie show times bangalore.

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