How to improve your Google searches

While it's not likely to be ousted as most people's search engine of choice, finding relevant results on Google has certainly gotten tougher than ever before. Today, the search results pages on the site are usually littered with advertisements, recommended results, and from sites that know how to make the most of search engine optimization techniques, but that don't necessarily represent the most reliable and accurate answers to user questions.

To get better results from Google, it's not enough just to type in a few keywords and hope for the best. By using the tips we have put together below you should be able to find what you are looking for faster and easier.

More specific searches Quotation marks help you to be more specific in your searches.

Google via David Nield One of the most effective ways to narrow down your results is to put your search terms in quotation marks; From song lyrics to movie titles, this trick eliminates much of the confusion on the results pages by letting Google know exactly what you are looking for. It is particularly effective when your search keywords are not used together frequently.

WiredLeaks, how to send us an anonymous report By placing a minus sign (-) immediately before a keyword, you can exclude results that include that term. This is a very effective technique when you want to avoid results associated with other keywords, or want to exclude news that is dominating the headlines (and therefore the search results). Instead, you can add a plus sign ("+") in front of words that you are sure you want to include in your search (by default, Google may treat some of your keywords as optional).

Generally speaking, the more keywords you use in your search, the better. You might think that Google can figure out what you're looking for based on just one or two terms, but you'll be amazed at how much better results can be when you're more specific. This strategy can be especially useful in cases where you get a lot of results that are not closely related to what you are hoping to find.

Focus on specific sites You can get results from specific sites, such as Wikipedia.
Google via David NieldIt's not always convenient for Google to scour the entire web. If there is a particular site that you want to consult or that you particularly trust, type site: followed by the url of the site in question after the keywords you want to search for. Google will only return results from that specific domain.

This function can be useful when searching for results on Wikipedia, for example. With a normal search you are likely to see a lot of sponsored, optimized and biased sites before the online encyclopedia; adding "site: wikipedia.org", on the other hand, you will only get results from Wikipedia, while still taking advantage of Google's excellent abilities in search and positioning of pages.

The trick obviously works for any site you consider authoritative. Maybe you want to focus on a particular news site that you trust, or maybe you are interested in the results of an official portal, and not in the matches coming from other parts of the web.

Leverage the advanced search tools Google offers a whole page of advanced search tools.

Google via David Nield In a rush to enter your searches, you may not have noticed the little gear icon that appears at the top right of the results page Google search. Click on the icon and then on Advanced Search to access a whole series of additional parameters that will make your searches more accurate and effective.

You can use the advanced search page to include or exclude certain words, as we have Already seen. You can also limit the results to a particular language or region (another feature that can come in handy when you get a lot of redundant results). Another interesting field is the file type drop-down menu, which allows you to search for pdfs, word documents, excel spreadsheets, gifs in image search, and other types of files instead of web pages.

The advanced search page also has options that allow you to view pages that have recently been updated, search for keywords in a particular section of a website, and obtain content that has a Creative Commons license. Once you start using these advanced features, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Adding more search operators Select with operators for better search results.

Google via David Nield You can use a variety of search operators that allow you to dig deeper into Google results and see matches that you wouldn't otherwise get. Inserting "OR" between keywords, for example, allows you to search at once for several terms that do not necessarily have to appear together in the results. The asterisk ("*"), on the other hand, is a kind of wildcard that Google will use to return the most popular results for a given search (for example "how to learn * on YouTube").

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Arrow The "before:" and "after:" operators allow you to limit the results to a specific date (the Tools button on the results page offers the same function), which is particularly useful for excluding very recent or very old results. If you want to do a search on social media, you can use the hashtag (#) to search for hashtags, while if you are interested in an item with a certain price, type the euro symbol (€) followed by the figure that reflects the budget. you have available. Google also allows you to search for matches for a range of prices: try typing "camera € 50 .. € 100", for example, replacing the keyword and the price range with the products and figures that are right for you. Finally, you can also search for results on a site linked to another domain by typing "related:" followed by the url at the end of your search term.

This article originally appeared on sportsgaming.win US.