12 Effective Ways to Search on Google

Millions of people each day use Google to search for various reasons. Most people don’t use it to its full potential so today we’ll share with you 10 cool tips and tricks that you should be using with a google search. These tricks will assist you to be more valuable when searching the web and will support you to get more beneficial search results.

1. Related Results: If you want to find websites that are similar to other sites in the search bar you would type related followed by a colon and then you just put in the name of a website. For example related: google.com and then hit enter. Now you’ll see the results. Sites similar to Google like Bing, Yahoo will appear. Let’s try one more example:facebook.com and you see the results are ones that you would expect like Twitter, Google +, Linked In, and so forth. The stated results search is an excellent way to explore websites that you may not know about.
2. File Type: Sometimes searching by file type can be useful especially for students, teachers, or anyone conducting research that may be looking for a PDF, Word document, or any other file type. In the search bar first put in your search term followed by file type colon and the name of the file type. For example mac or viruses filetype:pdf you’ll see that most of the reasons are PDF links. Now let’s switch out the ending and put it in the doc. Now you see it ended up with different results with links to doc files. The file type function works with any sort of file type extension. 
3. Search Operators: Search operators such as the plus or minus sign is a great way to get better search results. For example, Tom Cruise, as you can see, search results are quite varied. Let’s suppose I just want the results related to Tom Cruise and Scientology after typing in Tom Cruise you can add in a plus sign before Scientology (Tom Cruise +scientology). If you wanted to completely omit any search results about Scientology instead of the plus you would use a minus sign (Tom Cruise -Scientology). It makes searching on Google more efficient. 
4. Asterisk*: You all may know that using a phrase and quotes will only give you results that exactly match the words in order inside the quotes. For example “may the force be with you” you’ll end up with results with that phrase using an asterisk replacing a word will be given you variations on that phrase in the results. So let’s replace force with an asterisk (“may the * be with you”) now the results have changed. Using an asterisk is especially great for trying to find all forms of similar phrases or unknown words and phrases. 
5. Results Nearby: Using the word nearby at the end of a search will show you results of places closest to you. For example, Coffee nearby, using the word nearby at the end of a search also works great for searching for restaurants or any other type of business. 
6. Cached: You may run into times when you can’t reach your website due to server problems or other issues but you still want to view that side. So just after searching, select the down arrow to the right of the URL. You will have two options, cached and similar. Similarity does not work that much now to find related sites. Select cached this will take you to a static view the last time Google snapped a picture of that site. You can also view articles that are sometimes hidden behind paywalls but this method is hit or miss.
7. Image Search: there may be times that you want a different size of an image you found on the web page. Using Google image search is quick and easy. Using the Chrome browser right-click on an image, select search Google for an image from the drop-down menu. This will open a new tab that selects all sizes to view every size of that image. 

8. Search within Sites: Doing a search within a specific website is one of the more useful search tricks. Let’s find out what the verb has written about augmented reality. In the search bar type augmented reality followed by site:theverge.com the search results will only include pages from that site regarding the search term. If you wanted a broader search but narrowed it down to just educational sites then at the end just put .edu. Now the shown results about augmented reality are from educational websites. 
9. Date Search: Searching by date is a great tool for limiting the time frame for search results using the same search query as the last example: select tools, select any time, here you have several options in the drop-down including any time. You can use the calendar to the right to input your dates but that takes a long time if you want searches of several years. So usually put the dates manually and hit enter. Now the search result is narrowed to specific dates within that range.
10. Stock Prices: This is a quick one for those of you that play the stock market to see how a stock is doing. If you are aware of the company’s tickers symbol which is referred to as a stock symbol. Just put that into the search bar for example: For Apple, it’s an “appl”, now you can see the stock range of Apple. Let’s try another. The parent company of Google is Alphabet Inc whose ticker symbol is “good”. You can increase the time gap from five days up to max. which is the entire time that company has been publicly traded. 
11. Title Search: if you want to get more relevant search results sometimes it’s best to just search the titles of web pages. For example intitle: Houston 
12. Advanced Search: If you really want to narrow down your search results. Advanced search just may be where you want to head. Over to setting and select advanced search from the drop-down menu. Here you’ll have more than a dozen options for filtering your search. Just be careful when filtering if you narrow your results too much you could end up with very few or no results. After you’ve typed and selected all your parameters to click advanced search at the bottom of the page. Then you’ll see all the search results.