These simple hacks will give you way better Google search results

Google isn’t the only search engine in the world, but it might as well be. Nobody ever sees something intriguing and quickly fires up AltaVista. Nobody’s asking Jeeves shit. Other than an annual wrestle to remove its toolbar from your parents’ dusty desktop computer, Yahoo! rarely enters your mind. Nope, it’s Googs all the way.

Are you doing good Googs though? Are your Googs the best Googs? You could probably Googs better, and should probably Googs better. Advanced Googs are available.

Exact phrases

The best-known trick with Google, putting combinations of words within speech marks searches for that exact phrase.

Missing words

If you know the beginning and the end of a phrase but don’t quiiiite have the whole thing, an asterisk can take the place of a missing word.

Excluded words

If you want results that don’t include a specific term, putting a minus sign before that word will exclude any results with it in. 

Synonyms

Placing a tilde (the little squiggly one) before a word searches for known synonyms of it as well, which can be especially useful with things like Americanisms. This example would bring up results for sore arse, sore anus, sore thunderbox etc.

Ranges

Searching for shopping stuff but aren’t made of money? Need a ruler that’s pretty long, but not toooooo long? Two full stops between two numbers, prices or dates limit results to that specific range.

Site-specific searches

If you only want to find results from, say, shortlist dot com, because, then adding site:shortlist.com to the Google bar will absolutely get you where you need to be.

Linkbacks

Have you made something and put it on the internet? Do you want to know if people are linking to it and calling you bad words? putting link: before it (without a space) will show you everywhere on the doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou it’s been mentioned.

(Pic: Pixabay)