Tutorials

May 1, 2012
in Tutorials
2 min read

How to Google more efficiently

Most people these days use google.com as their preferred search engine, and most times a regular search will bring you the results you are looking for. But what if you want a more complex search? Or want to filter out some results? Well, here’s a few pointers on how to Google a bit more efficiently, and some other neat tricks.

A regular search

Say that I want to search for a review for the cellphone HTC Desire Z. I could always use the string “HTC Desire Z review”. Or, we could do a more efficient search.

Take the following search string as an example:

site:engadget.com ~review “htc desire z” -amazon 2010..2012

Let’s break it down:

site:engadget:com – Only searches the pages of the site engadget.com
~review – Also searches related words, such as “check, examine, opinion”.
htc desire z – Searches for the exact phrase, and not each word separately.
-amazon – Excludes this term from the search.
2010..2012 – Shows all results from within the specified timerange.

The last element above not only works with a time-range, but also with any other type of range. For instance:

$100..$200

..gives you results based on a range from $100 to $200.

Searching for filetypes

In certain cases you want to search for specific types of file. For instance,

filetype:pdf linux intitle:best *distribution

Again, lets break this down:

filetype:pdf Searches only results of the file type you specify. .doc, .jpg, .torrent, the options are endless. Close to, anyway.
linux – Just a regular search string.
intitle:best – Only shows results with that word in the title (in this case, ‘best’)
*distribution – Replaces itself with common terms in your search (in this case ‘Arch Linux distribution’, ‘Red Hat distribution’, will both be searched, among many others)