Most of us use Google every day, in some way or form, but few people realize just how powerful Google is as a search tool. The search giant allows you to refine your searches with a long list of tools, operations and extensions. These are our top Google search hacks.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with an easy one that you are probably already using. Anytime you open Google in your PC browser, you will notice over on the top left hand side there are a couple of tabs, usually you\u2019ll see All, Images, Videos, News, Maps, More. <\/em><\/p>\n These are the most common search types, and by clicking on the tab you want, you will be able to define the kind of search you want to do.<\/p>\n Check out the \u201cMore\u201d and \u201cSettings\u201d Tabs, too, for additional functionality.<\/p>\n In Image search, check the \u201ctools\u201d tab to help you narrow your search down with everything from color to usage rights.<\/p>\n Google crawls a lot of content when you search for a term, and being the wonderful tool that it is, it tries to pre-empt every possible scenario for you, giving you suggestions based off of your search term. However, sometimes you want to search for something specific without any side tangents from Google. Use quotation marks<\/strong> to set exact parameters for your Google search. <\/strong>Google will then look for that exact phrase, rather than pull up anything with the same meaning.<\/p>\n For example, if you search for Chocolate Rose Boxes<\/em>, Google will search for content that contains those 3 words, or things that mean the same as them, in any order. If you type in \u201cChocolate Rose Boxes\u201d<\/em> with quotation marks, Google will only serve you webpages with that exact phrase, as you have typed it.<\/p>\n This is handy if you are looking for specific information that might be buried under other content, or in a case where there could be a lot of variables.<\/p>\n You can use hyphens (a dash) to exclude certain terms from your search results. This is particularly helpful if you are searching for something with an ambiguous meaning. For example if you want to know about mustang horses, and you don\u2019t want to be served hundreds of pages about cars, you would type in mustang \u2013 cars. <\/em>This tells the search engine to ignore content with cars in it.<\/p>\n If you need to find specific content on a particular site, this is a handy shortcut. When you need to Google search for articles or content on a certain website, and no other, you can use a colon to make sure Google doesn\u2019t stray. For example:<\/p>\n Sidney Crosby site:nhl.com<\/p>\n\u201cQuotation Marks\u201d for Specific Searches<\/h3>\n
Hyphens to Exclude Words<\/h3>\n
Colon to search Specific Sites<\/h3>\n