Search Smart I

Search Smart (with Google search operators)

We all use Google (or other search engines) to retrieve info from the vast realms of the net. But do we search smart? Well, start searching smart; even write microscripts - to get what you are looking for, making use of the special operators provided by the search engines. Here is how to do it…

If a word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it.

If you want to search not only for your search term but also for its synonyms, place the tilde sign ("~") immediately in front of your search term. (If you give '~House'; Google automatically searches for House, Home, Dwelling etc too. If you give '~Food'; Google searches for Food, Nutrition, Cooking, Recipe etc).

To find pages that include either of two search terms, add an uppercase OR between the terms.

What if you want to search a string only within a particular site - give search terms you're looking for, followed by the word "site" and a colon followed by the domain name (If you want to find Hawking in Wikipedia only, give 'Hawking site:en.wikipedia.org')

You can use Numrange (two numbers, separated by two periods) to set ranges for everything from dates to weights to amounts (eg: 'Saarang 2004..2007'; '5000..10000 kg truck'; 'DVD player $50..$100'). Google searches for all the numbers between the range along with the keyword(s).

Google ignores common words and characters such as where, the, how.

Sometimes the best way to ask a question is to get Google to 'fill in the blank' for you. You can do this by adding an asterisk "*" in the part of the sentence or question that you want filled in. ('the parachute was invented by *')

I suggest you try out each of them its really interesting and useful!