Google Search Tricks

Bidur Devkota

LecturerGandaki College of Engineering & Science

Pokhara -16, Nepal

bidur.devkota(at)gmail.com

July 2013

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Search Engine: Google, Bing, etc.

Fig: Information Overload 1

Why do we use search engine?To get the Right/Relevant Information.Do we really get what we want? or anything more ?The data that we need is trapped.A study revels an average knowledge worker loses 6.2 hours each weeklooking for information and not finding it. “Hidden Costs ofInformation Work in the Enterprise” 2

You need to tune the way you search the internet.1

http://yclibrarynews.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/screen-shot-2012-02-06-at-11-28-12-pm.png2

http://socialmediatoday.com/themaria/551710/right-information-right-time

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Simple Google Search

We simply enter the keywords in the search bar.

Here, you may have got exactly what you desired, but this is may notbe the case always.

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Many tricks can be applied to tune the result. Several built infunctions are provided by Google which makes searching morerelevant. Some of these ways will be discussed here.

A simple convention is to keep things simple (see Table below). 3

3http://www.minitex.umn.edu/Training/DisplaySessionHandout.aspx?SessionID=213

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Enclose multiple words in quotation marks to search those exactwords in that exact order.

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Dictionary: use ”define:“ following the word to get the list ofdictionary definitions for that searched word.

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Google calculator:from the simplest math to complex equation likeaddition, subtraction, multiply, divide, square root, power, etc.

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Specific Site: Sometimes we need to search things from a specificsite. Just use site: followed by the site name.

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Related Site: Alternative sites similar to some known site can besearched by using related: function.

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Specific Title: The pages with specific content in the title pages canbe searched with intitle: followed by the word phrase to search.

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Specific Author: The pages with results for specific author can besearched with the keyword author: .

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Weather Updates: Wheater queries can be made by typing thekeyword weather followed by place name.

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Google Convertor: We can make conversions like millimeter intoinches, liters into milli liters, centimeter to millimeter, kilometers intomiles, and so on.

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Search for URLs: We can search for specific URLs in the search resultby using ’ ’. The search will look for results with the URLs containingthe desired words .

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Currency Comparision: Googles search is featured with an currencyconverter.

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Telephone Number Lookup: By using the keyword phonebook, we cando telephone number lookup.

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Specific file types: We can look for Specific type of files by using thefiletype: function. For e.g. ’filetype:pdf will sought for only .pdfformat files.

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Local time: Google displays the localtime anywhere in the world byusing the keyword ”time“. For e.g. what time is it Pokhara ”, ORtime (Pokhara) without the quotes.

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Unknown word placeholder: Asterisk can be used as a placeholder tosearch a phrase with missing words.

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Avoid undesired search results: The use of ’-’ operator in front of aword will prevent the search result from having that word.

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Queries??Thank You!

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