Google is an incredibly useful resource and a sophisticated search engine. However, the average user doesn’t get the best out of it because they don’t know how to use its full power. Most users just enter a search term in the search box and wait for Google to display the first page of search results. This usually generates a ton of mostly unwanted results and wastes valuable time.
We have compiled a few tricks to help you generate relevant results faster.
Use quotation marks to get an exact phrase. Enclosing your search term in quotation marks tells Google to search for the precise keywords in the prescribed order.
Typing “how to drive a car” will give you exact directives on how to drive a car, not the history of how to ride a bicycle.
To search for a specific image, just drag and drop the image on the search bar or click the camera icon in and paste the image URL. Try it now, you will be surprised with the results
Adding a hyphen before a word tells Google to remove results related to the word from search results.
You do this when you want to find a word with various meanings or various similarities.
Searching for ‘Empire -movie’ removes pages related to the movie Empire from search results.
To search within a particular website, all you have to do is to include the site:example.com after your search term to return results from that particular website only.
Searching ‘secure password site:joxiacreative.com’ will only return results from joxiacreative.com only.
Search for specific facts to get fact-based information, such as population, birthplaces, birth dates, etc., just enter a search term that states the fact you are interested in.
To get the population of Lagos, enter population Lagos
To find out where 2face was born, enter birthplace 2face.
To know when Fela Kuti died, enter die Fela.
To find out who the current governor of Borno State is, enter governor Borno.
Using an asterisk (*) as a placeholder for missing parts of a phrase/lyric helps provide the missing (or unknown) word/ lines.
Let’s say you need to get the complete saying for ‘nothing goes for nothing’, but you only know the first part, just type ‘nothing goes for *’ then the asterisk helps you fill the missing word.
Use related: URL to get pages similar to a web page you really like. If you really like the news that BBC provides, you can find similar news pages by entering related: bbc.com
MORE GOOGLE SEARCH FEATURES
Set Timer: Type Set Timer <desired amount of time> i.e. Set Timer 3 minutes
Current Time: Type <time city> to get the Current Time for that location i.e. time Lagos
Sports Details: Type <sports team name> to get fixtures and current scores of the team i.e. Arsenal
Calculator: Type < equations> to get solutions to the equation i.e. x+x+6
Conversions: Type <amount-unit 1> to <unit 2> to convert between units i.e. 10 gallons to litres
IP Address: Type <IP Address> to get your current public IP Address
Dictionary: Type define <word> to get the dictionary meaning i.e. define Phantasmagoria
Translations: Type translate <word> to <language> i.e. translate ohun rere to English
Weather Details: Type weather <city> to get weather forecast i.e. weather Abuja
Other useful tips
Use images.google.com to get images results only
Use translate.google.com to translate between languages
Use voice commands to search Google by clicking the microphone icon in the search bar and start talking
And in case you get bored, type any of the following search terms
Do a barrel roll
Askew
The loneliest number
Google in 1998
Roll A Die
Google sphere (and click I am feeling lucky)
Atari breakout (in google images)
At Joxia Creative, we don’t just build fast and beautiful websites, we ensure that they show up on Google search results for relevant keywords.
Contact us today to get your website professionally designed.
