AB: All-Round Nice Guy

There’s no secret that the word ‘google’ has gone from an obscure mathematical reference to an internet phenomenon, to the point where it is has now joined the ranks of other marketing heroes such as Hoover and Biro. The word ‘google’ can be considered a noun (’google it’), a verb (’to google’ something), and often, an adjective (’I'm going googling’).

The main touch point most of have with the Google megacompany is their search engine - either google.com, google.com.au, or the search field built in to our browser.

Google is certainly the largest and most impressive search engine on the planet, and with it’s minimalist design, it’s both highly accessible and usable.

But (you knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you?) searching for things on Google is still a hit-and-miss affair: many, many times you get search results numbering in the tens of millions, while other times, your results can be few and far between, and totally removed from your original intentions of your search.

In the end, Google does the best job it can, but then it leaves us mere humans to filter the results until we find exactly what it is we’re looking for. Humans are good at filtering things - Google isn’t always the best at it.

So, just like getting to know your way around your local library, you realy have to get to know Google if you want to find things faster and easier - the good news is that there are many tips, tricks and techniques to getting the most out of searching for things on the internet - so sit back, and I’ll show you some of the best ones.

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Location Search

This isn’t a Google tip necessarily, but more of a general search engine tip: always give your search some geographic boundary. For example, when looking for ‘my next car’, at least put in the word ‘Australia’ or ‘Victoria’ in there, too - you’ll certainly exclude the masses of search results from the rest of the world. Sometimes you can try even more locally, but just like not wanting 10 million results, having only one or two results doesn’t always give you the confidence that you’ve found your perfect car - you might have missed your ‘perfect’ car in Barwon Heads by limiting the search to ‘Ocean Grove’.

Phrases

Here’s the most simple tip if you find your searches going a little astray: if you’re searching for ‘African artichokes’ for example, and you find lots of links to African holidays and lots of links to artichoke recipes, then what you need to do is put your search inside quotes (”"). If you search for “African artichokes”, you’ll only get results with that exact phrase. Problem solved.

Plusses and Minuses

The next best tip is to add a plus sign (+) or a minus sign (-) directly in front of words that you definitely want or *don’t* want to appear in your searches. For example: ‘virus -computer’ will look for the word ‘virus’, but will not return any results with the word ‘computer’ nearby.

The plus sign is used by Google by default anyway (’my next car’ is actually ‘+my +next +car’), but you do need it if you have a short or common word that is important to your search, but that Google says is ignores because, well, it’s too short or too common… For example, if you wanted to look for ‘Winnie the Pooh’, but for some reason you didn’t end up with the hunney-loving bear, search for ‘Winnie +the Pooh’, and you’ll be guaranteed a better result. In that example, a phrase search would have been easier still.

Rough Matches

Close, but no cigar? That happens a lot - you get stuck because you searched for a word that *you* know, but something that the rest of the world calls something different. In that case, try a tilde (~) (the funny little character to the left of your Number 1 key - it’s shift-backtick). For example: ‘woolen ~jumper’ will find woolen jumpers, woolen knit tops, and sweaters - all the synonyms of the word you were looking for.

Recent Dates

If something you need is quite topical, and might be something that’s only been on the internet in the last few months or so, then add ‘date: 6′ to the end of your search - that will limit the results to only web sites added in the last 6 months.

Combos galore

OK - here’s where you turn in to a professional Googler - by combining all the above together, you’ll never be stuck again. The combinations are only limited to your imagination.

For example, if you wanted to find only shops that sold gum ball machines in Geelong, you might try: ‘ “gum ball machine” shop Geelong’. If you got some weird results for sports shops (golf ball or cricket ball, for example), you might tack on ‘ -sport’ to your query. Note that your last search is always displayed on the Google search results page as a new search waiting to happen, so it’s really easy to modify your last search and give it another go.

Definitions

Stuck for a meaning of a word? Don’t panic, simply search for ‘define: whatever’, to find the meaning of the word ‘whatever’ around the web.

Calculator

I know it’s not overly useful, but since there’s a Google search box built into most browser toolbars, if you’re ever about to reach for a scratch pad to do some simple maths, er, don’t - you can use +, - , * and / for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, as well as ‘% of’ (eg: ‘25% of 365′). You can’t solve complex things, but the occasional ‘345 * 67′ is convenient, at least.

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I hope that that has helped you slightly in refining your searches *before* you get hit with the millions of search results - over time, I can assure you that you can really get to know Google as a very smart and powerful reference tool.

AB out