How to refine your Google search; Common search techniques

Why do you need to improve your Google search? Most of the times, we find the information we need quite fast. Sometimes we may spend a lot of time looking for information. By using these operators, you will hopefully find what you search for a lot quicker and easier.

The operators:

The or | operator

The or | operator is helpful for searching for something that you are not sure what the name was. You can either write "or" or use the pipe sign |. For example, search for Tom Bill, and you will get a lot of Toms and Bills and Tom Bill himself. If you write Tom | Bill, you'll get Tom Cruise and Bill Gates.

Including an exact word with quotation marks ""

You can include exact words with the quotation marks. Using quotation marks are useful when you want to make sure that you include a certain word in the search. Searching for best burger in Helsinki 2015 will not yield as many results from 2015 as best burger in Helsinki "2015" would. You can also write the whole search sentence in quotation marks. Google will thus include just results with the whole matched sentence. Searching "best burger in Helsinki 2015" reveals that Kämp had the best burger 2015.

Excluding a word with the hyphen - sign.

Different searches can yield different results depending on what context the words are using. If you are a Star Wars fan like me, you can search for Star Wars -"episode IX" to exclude the upcoming episode.

Search within site with the site: operator

You can search within a site with the site operator. For example, say that you want to find everything related to Tkinter on my website. You write site:connysoderholm.com Tkinter, and Google now lists all results with Tkinter from my site.

Using the asterisk * wild card

You can use the * sign to replace a word in your search. Searching for fastest * in Europe reveals the fastest roller coasters, internet, companies, and cars in Europe.

Search within a range

Don't know the exact number? Use the number to number search. A search for tablet $700..$900 shows us some various results for tablets in the price range of 700 to 900 dollars.

Searching for related sites

You can write related: to see similar sites to the one you search for. Typing, for example related: foreship.com shows related content to the Foreship website.