Google offers tips to Refine web searches. Find a few more below.
Basic search tips:
Search specific sites or domains:
Search for specific file types:
Find a definition:
Here are some tips and tricks to become a more savvy Google searcher to increase your relevant results.
(This content was adapted from an infographic by Camila Souza)
If you're looking for an exact phrase put it in quotations. Here's an example "greatest of all time"
If you want to omit a word from your search, add a hyphen before a word. This is helpful if you're searching for a word that has multiple meanings or is used in multiple contexts. An example search is "Apollo 13" -movie.
This search will retrieve results from a single domain. For example, to find reviews of films from the New York Times, the search looks like this movie reviews site:nytimes.com
To find new sites similar to another, use the term related paired with a URL. This should find site with similar content. Here's how the search phrase looks - related:smittenkitchen.com
These types of queries look for either all searched words in webpage (allintext) or for a single term in the text (intext) with other terms appearing elsewhere in the site. This one sounds a little confusing, so try a few sample searches to see how it works.
Sample search string for all in text = allintext:tax free weekend
Sample search for in text = bill murray intext:chicago
These are very similar to the in text searches, only for page titles. Use all in title (allintitle) to find all the search words in a title or in title (intitle) to find a particular word in the title with other terms elsewhere in the page. Here are sample search strings for both
All it title = allintitle:darjeeling limited review
in title = covid vaccine intitle:help
This search technique finds pages with the query in the URL. Here's an example music allinurl:npr.org
Use this approach when searching Google News to find stories coming from a specific location. The search will look like this hurricane location:New Orleans
When looking for a power point, pdf, jpg, or other file type, add the filetype: suffix to the search query. Here's an example of a file type search string mountains filetype:ppt
Separate numbers with two dots to see results containing that range. When looking for a washing machine that costs between $1200 and $1800, the search will look like this washing machine $1200..$1800
Drawing a blank or forgot a piece of a phrase, the asterisk acts as a wildcard to help find the missing work in a phrase. Here's an example don't count * before *
Use OR to find pages with one of several words. Forget the OR and the results will include pages that contain all the words. Example: World Cup 2022 OR 2019
Not all punctuation works in Google. Here's what does work in Google and how.
ase the plus sign when searching for things like blood type (O+ or HIV+)
use the at sign when searching social tags (@UNTLibraries)
use the ampersand with searching for strongly connected ideas of phrases (Libraries & information literacy)
use this when searching for percent values (% of women in STEM careers)
use the dollar sign when looking for prices ($5.99 pizza)
use this when searching for trend that use hashtags (#collegelfe)
use this when searching for strongly connected words (john-beatles)
