• Using Truncation

Not sure of what keywords to use? You might consider using the simple `*` to expand on your search. What it does is that if you place that in the query, then you’ll get results for the word combination you’ve keyed in, with `*` as variant. For example, if you type in `cartoon * tutorials`, you will get sites with the phrase “Cartoon Character Illustration Tutorials”, “Cartoon Coloring Tutorial”, “Cartoon Animation Tutorial”, etc.

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• Exact Phrases

Sometimes, you can narrow down your search by simply telling the Google to search websites with the exact order of the words. For instance, if you want to find out who quoted “The unexamined life is not worth living”, then it is preferable that you type the whole line rather than putting in keywords like “unexamined” or “living“.

Quotation marks, ” “, should ideally be used if you want the search engine to only look for sites with exact phrasing. But as I mentioned in #1, search engines are capable of sorting the results in a ranked manner in accordance to how close the words are next to each other. You would probably still get your results if the quote is well-known.

At other times, you might want to use a combination of exact phrases and keywords to enhance your search. For example, you might want to search for sites that provide useful tips on leveraging social media for your business. Rather than using three keywords: “social”, “media” and “business”, you can type in “social media” business in the form and get more accurate results.

How so? “social media” is an inseparable entity, which makes sure that all sites listed must have the exact phrasing of “social media”. This is more useful than searching for “social” and “media” individually. “business” and “social media” have now become keywords that will be searched in any order of the wordings.

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• The “OR” and “-“

OR operator already exists in Google. When you type in any keywords, websites that contains any of the keywords will be displayed in the results. The difference with the OR operator is that you can define keywords or phrases with quotation marks rather than have the search engine search for all the words you typed in. This means to say that if you put “social media” OR “business”, you will get sites that consists of either “social media” or “business”, and not any of the three words per se.

The minus sign,–, is useful if you wish to exclude a particular word or phrase in your search. This is valuable when you are searching for exception to what search results would typically produce.

Let’s say you wish to search for someone with the name “Bill Gates”, but not the chairman of Microsoft who we are all familiar with. You know that sites with the name “Bill Gates” would usually come with “Microsoft”, so using the – sign like “bill gates” -microsoft would bring you close to what you really want to find.

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• Search Within A Site

There comes a time when you know there is only one site which you need to search for something you want, but chances are the site has either a broken search function or a confusing search result. The worst case: the site has no search function at all. In these cases, Google prove to be very handy as it allows you to search within certain site, as long as the site is indexed by the Google.

To search within a site using the Google, all you need to do is input the search query into the Google with the domain name, such as photoshop tutorial site:hongkiat.com. Google will then return the results only from the site you mentioned, such as photoshop tutorials only from the Hongkiat.com. Note that the site: must be added before the domain name, else Google will search for other sites as well.